Moments of Grace - Season Four, Act Four: This is How We Do
by Parlanchina
Summary: With the departure of Jordan Todd and the return of Jennifer Jareau, life at the BAU is getting back to normal - or, at least, as normal as it is possible to be when you hunt down the most depraved minds on the planet for a living. Can SSA Grace Pearce maintain the line between her personal and professional life? AU. Complete!
1. Bloodline

**Essential listening: Tag You're It, by Melanie Martinez**

 **0o0**

Supervisory Special Agent Emily Prentiss wove her way through the packed club with a tray of cocktails and one mocktail, because SSA Jennifer Jareau was still breastfeeding. They weren't intending to stay out too late, this being a school night, but after their last few cases, and aware that their temporary media liaison would be leaving them soon, the ladies of the BAU had decided that they could afford a quick night out.

"Okay, so a rum punch for Penelope, a Meet Me in St Germaine for Jordan, a Virgin Strawberry Daiquiri for Jayj, an English Rose for Grace, and a Pornstar Bellini for me," she said, passing them out to their respective recipients. She downed the shot of Prosecco that constituted half of her drink in one and took her place at the little table in the corner that they thought of as their own – when they were in town long enough to go out.

"Thanks," said SA Jordan Todd happily.

"Ooh, that's a fabulous colour," said Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia remarked, eyeing the St Germaine. "Like a party in a glass!" She rearranged the slice of lime and party umbrella in her own drink artfully, then took a quick shot for her Instagram.

"What's in an English Rose?" Jordan asked.

"Tea gin," said SSA Grace Pearce with relish. "Usually Sipsmiths'. And rose petals, elderflower tonic, that kind of thing."

"That is so you," Emily told her and Grace laughed.

"Oh I think I'm much less elegant," she quipped. She twirled a rosebud between her fingertips and grinned. "I am a delicate fucking flower, though."

The others snorted.

"I've missed you crazy ladies," said JJ, with real affection.

Grace gave her a one-armed hug that managed to convey that they had all missed her too, but that this was in no way a reflection on Jordan, who had been serving as her rather harassed maternity cover.

"I can't believe four months have gone so fast," Jordan reflected.

"Uh, yeah," said JJ. "Henry is so big now. It doesn't seem like any time at all!"

"Just a few, short months ago you were a total n00b," Garcia told Jordan, with a grin. "And now you're one of us!"

"One of us! One of us! One of us!" Grace and Emily chorused, making Jordan burst out laughing.

"You know, even now I'm not sure that's such a good thing," she said, only half joking.

"I bet your old team can't wait to get you back," said Grace, kindly.

"Hah, yeah," said Jordan. "I dread to think what they've been doing in my absence."

"Back to Counter Terrorism?" JJ asked.

"Mmhmm," she replied, taking a sip of her drink. "I've got a week to myself after I finish here – and I need it, after what you guys have put me through."

"And I thought counter-terrorism was a tough gig," Emily said.

"Not as tough as yours," she said, raising her eyebrows. "I don't know how you guys do it, day in – day out. I don't envy you your positions at all."

"I guess we're all a little crazy by this point," said Grace. She glanced fondly at Garcia, who was cleaning off the little foil sparkler thing that came with her drink in order to tuck it behind her ear. "If we weren't already."

"Yeah," said JJ, with a laugh. "It's less a job and more of a way of life, at this point."

"You got that right," Emily snorted. "Except for Christmas, I don't remember the last time I had AL."

"How were your mom and dad?" Garcia asked, smirking.

Emily's ongoing struggle to convince her ambassadorial mother that she neither wanted nor needed to attend the dizzying round of social functions that were an essential part of the life of a high-flying political family were a source of constant frustration for her. She was aware that her friends sympathised, but based on the fact that all four of them were sniggering into their drinks right now, she could tell it was also a source of some amusement.

Still, their jobs made them good listeners.

"Urgh, don't get me started," she complained, and then recited a choice selection of infuriating anecdotes from the recent festive season that quickly had them all in stitches. To her surprise, it kind of made her feel better.

By the time she had finished, all five of them had drained their glasses and Jordan departed to the bar.

"So, you still up for a double-date this weekend?" Garcia asked Grace, who nodded.

"Sure. Cinema, right?" she checked, as JJ met Emily's eyes and both had to turn away at the image that came to mind.

"Yeah – Saturday, assuming we're here."

"What're you seeing?" Emily asked.

"Some thriller flick Kevin's really into," Garcia told them, with the air of someone who would have been happier seeing a rerun of _Hackers_.

"Yeah, Troy's been raving about it, too," said Grace.

"You don't get enough of murder at work?" Jordan asked, amused, setting down a fresh tray of drinks.

"You'd think," Emily laughed.

"I got into the Scandinavian thrillers when I was up all night, breastfeeding Henry," JJ put in. "Spent half my time assessing strategy and figuring out where they'd gone wrong."

"Occupational hazard," said Grace, wryly. "I do it to Agatha Christies – though it has to be said, Miss Marple's pretty much on point in terms of profiling."

"She was ahead of her time," Emily laughed.

"She's kind of my hero," Grace admitted.

"I can totally see that! I think we've found you a new nickname!" Garcia declared, as Grace groaned.

0o0

Jordan stalked through the office, a stack of files under her arm.

This was not how she imagined her final working week to go. But then, this _was_ the BAU she supposed really, she ought to have seen it coming. Her sure-footed ex-dancer's feet took her through the maze of desks and between Emily and SSA David Rossi, who were taking a break from their respective stacks of reports.

"Hey," said Emily, in greeting, but Jordan simply squeezed between the two of them.

"Excuse me," she said, hurrying up the steps towards SSA Aaron Hotchner's office.

Behind her, she heard Rossi mutter, "This isn't good," and Emily's subsequent agreement.

They were not wrong.

Hotch was on the phone when she walked into his office, not even bothering to knock. "We have a request from Alabama," she said, without preamble.

"Have everybody meet in the conference room, I'll be there in ten minutes," he said, effectively dismissing her.

Well no, that wasn't going to work – not this time.

"A husband and wife were murdered at their home while they were sleeping," she told him, before he could tell her to leave. "Their ten year old daughter is missing."

She saw the slight raise of his eyebrow as he accepted the urgency of the situation and did a complete mental one-eighty. "Alright, I'm gonna have to call you back," he said, immediately hanging up the telephone. "When were the bodies discovered?"

"Less than an hour ago," she responded at once.

"What was the Time of Death?"

"Approximately one a.m."

"Eight hours," he reflected, grabbing his go-bag from under the desk.

"I know this isn't a serial," she began, but he waved her objection away.

"No, you're right. Most abducted children don't survive past the first twenty-four hours," he said, striding out of the office.

It was a little like trying to keep up with a contained, single-minded thunderstorm.

"Dave," he said, as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

"What's going on?" Rossi asked, already on high alert.

"We've got a missing ten-year-old girl, home invasion, parents were killed in their sleep," Hotch summarised.

"Where's our clock?" Rossi asked.

"Eight hours and counting."

Emily, who had been listening, nodded curtly and reached for her own go-bag. "I'll find Morgan, Pearce and Reid and tell them we're on the move," she said.

"Good," said Hotch, already leaving. "Wheels up in thirty."

And that was that.

0o0

 _There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues of human society are created, strengthened and maintained._

 _Winston Churchill_

0o0

Grace scanned through the scant forensic information that had been collected prior to take off. It wasn't much to go on, but with any luck, by the time they landed in Alabama they would have more to go on. The M.E. hadn't even completed the autopsies on the kid's parents yet.

She sighed, glancing at the colourful photograph of a smiling little girl that was clipped to the inside of the folder.

 _Hang in there, kid,_ she thought, hoping she was still alive. The odds were against them, though. Most abducted children Katie Hale's age didn't make it past the first twenty-four hours. Grace checked her watch: ten hours down already; twelve by the time they landed and reached the crime scene.

Across from her, Rossi and Emily were absorbing anything they could from their files, while Hotch did the same on the side seat across from the table. Doctor Spencer Reid – who had probably reread the file at least three times by now – was sitting cross-legged towards the back of the jet, mentally reviewing this case and cross-referencing them against the thousands of previous murders he kept in his head. SSA Derek Morgan and Todd were across from him, the former reading a file, the latter liaising with law enforcement on the ground.

Abruptly, Todd picked up her laptop and got to her feet. "We got the uplinks of the crime scene photos," she announced, carrying laptop to the desk and taking a seat beside Grace. "This is Jeff and Nancy hale," she said, as a series of brutal post mortem shots flicked up on the screen. "Both their throats were cut."

Grace nodded, raising an eyebrow at the arcs of arterial spray.

"Any evidence of abuse?" Morgan asked, settling next to Hotch.

"Nothing," said Todd.

"So, they weren't the focus of the unsub's fixation," Grace mused. "They were just in the way."

"Slitting someone's throat is quick and efficient," Reid mused, joining the huddle around the laptop.

"That's because the real target was down the hall," Prentiss reflected, sadly.

Todd subjected Emily to a hollow stare. "She has a name."

Emily met her gaze, surprised. "What?"

"She's not the target," Todd insisted coldly. "Her name's Kate. She's ten years old."

There was a moment when every agent on the jet gave Jordan Todd a slightly weird, slightly wary look. Despite her years in Counter-Terrorism, she was relatively new to murder and particularly to the kind of emotional detachment that was necessary to get through the kind of case the BAU saw, day in day out. It could make her a bit prone to ill-timed outbursts.

"Alright," Emily allowed, as delicately as she could.

"Amber Alert in effect?" Rossi said, gently moving the conversation on as Todd turned her face away, obviously frustrated.

Across from the table, Reid and Morgan shared a brief, speaking look.

"Since 7 a.m. this morning," Todd told them, staring at the corpses of Kate's parents on the screen of her computer.

"She could be anywhere by now," Grace mused.

"Within a four hundred mile radius," Hotch agreed. "Make sure that they're casting a wide enough net."

"Got it," said Todd, making a note and bearing the team's vigilance with reasonable Grace.

"Who discovered the bodies?" Morgan asked.

"Jim Suree, Kate's biological father," Todd explained, checking her file. "He was supposed to take her for the weekend, but the police don't consider him a suspect."

"We'll wanna talk to him anyway," Hotch instructed, and Todd nodded.

"We're also going to need a list of registered sex offenders in a twenty mile radius," Emily added.

Grace nodded, throwing her ten pence in. "And anything the local departments have on people they're concerned about, but who haven't made it into official reports."

"What's the make-up of the Hale neighbourhood?" Reid asked.

"Mostly white and middle-class," said Todd, checking to make sure she had remembered correctly."

"We'll need aerial views of the neighbourhood," said Morgan, as Reid nodded. "If Madison county doesn't have them, talk to Garcia."

Garcia could find anything.

"Dave – you, Pearce and Morgan go to the crime scene," Hotch instructed. "The rest of us will get up to speed at the precinct."

0o0

The Hales had lived in a beautiful, leafy part of the country that reminded Grace of rural villages in the UK. Harvest, Alabama was quiet, with plenty of open spaces, copses of trees and swathes of farmland. It was pleasant and – if it weren't for their grim task – would have been peaceful. The quiet and the countryside would be easy to get lost in; the kind of place that was good for the world-weary copper. Good for predators, too, sadly.

They got out of the departmental SUV and met an officer at the tape line stretched between the trees in front of a modest, well-kept family home. Grace grimaced.

"Bo Whittaker, pleased to meet ya," said the young deputy who had obviously been waiting to brief them. He shook all their hands in turn as they introduced themselves.

"Point of entry's around back," he said in an Alabama drawl, leading them under the tape. "The neighbours didn't see or hear anything and the dogs lost the scent almost immediately."

"Not hard to target a family out here," Morgan reflected sadly.

"Mmm, even in broad daylight," Deputy Whittaker said, waving a hand at the woods that ran almost to the edge of the Hales' property, "head nine feet off the track, can get lost for days."

The four of them stopped beside at homemade swing hanging from a nearby tree. For some reason, it was still swinging, all by itself, as if Katie had just jumped off it. No one could have got through the line of tape and officers, though. Could it have been a gust of wind? Grace glanced around: the day was warm for the time of year and still. Her colleagues didn't appear to have noticed the swing's strange movement, however.

 _Please don't let that mean she's dead_ , she thought suddenly, narrowing her eyes.

Stubbornly putting the swing down to a quirk of the vestiges of Katie's presence (or even evidence of an older spirit), she squared her shoulders.

"So, he had plenty of privacy to watch what he was really after," Rossi remarked.

"Kate Hale," she said, watching the swing.

"I prefer cities," Rossi grumbled. "You can see them coming."

 _Not always_ , Grace thought, recalling cases she had worked on both sides of the Atlantic. The morass of people in cities made for a different kind of camouflage, but no less effective for those with murder on the mind. She didn't say it aloud, however. It didn't matter, and this wasn't the time to get into social dynamics and hunting grounds in rural versus urban environments.

The men went around the back of the property, but Grace went into the house.

Hotch had sent her a look as they got off the jet that she had interpreted as an invitation to take a look around the crime scene for anything lingering that the other members of the team might miss. The house was reasonably neat, suggesting a happy, active family. Some things were out of place, but no more than might ordinarily be out in a household of two working adults and a bubbly child. There were a couple of dishes in the sink, for example, and a magazine on the couch, a pair of spectacles balanced carelessly on top of it. Nothing that suggested problems; nothing that should be making her feel uncomfortable.

But something was.

It was like an old song at the very edge of hearing – a tune she was sure she ought to recognise, if only she could listen properly. Grace shook her head. It wasn't a spectre (though she could feel the presence of one, in the bedroom, where the Hales had died), of that she was certain. She couldn't put her finger on it.

 _Someone else's magic…_

It made her mind itch.

She walked into the kitchen, taking care to step around the yellow forensic markers denoting items of interest (mostly broken glass, in here), and made her way to the door. Rossi, Morgan and Deputy Whittaker were on the other side of it, frowning at the mess someone had made.

"Not very sophisticated," Rossi observed, prodding a glass shard with a pen and then using it to pull the door open. "Knocked out the pane to unlock the door."

The window had been entirely busted in, the glass strewn on the ground outside and crushed. Grace peered at the fragments thoughtfully. There was a mixture of window pane and coloured glass – but none of the windows she had seen in the Hales' house had stained glass. Brought in from the outside, maybe?

Frowning, she took a picture of it with her mobile phone.

"Got something?" Rossi asked, watching her.

"Don't know," she told him. "Reminds me of something. Not sure what. Something I read, maybe… I don't know."

Bo Whittaker looked up at them with sadness in his eyes. "Do you think the girl's dead?"

Morgan sighed. "Depends on what he took her for."

0o0

"The Hales' neighbourhood is a series of rural roads and one-block streets," said Reid, briskly taking an aerial photo off the board to better consider it at the table.

Aaron watched him, his brow furrowed. "How far to a main thoroughfare?"

"A little over three miles," Reid answered, checking on the map.

"So he didn't come upon Kate by accident." Aaron glanced over at the Sheriff who was coordinating the investigation. Perhaps there was a way to find out how their paths had crossed. "Sheriff Bates?"

"Yessir?" The harassed looking sheriff of a usually quiet part of Alabama hurried over at this summons, happy for any help and eager to do anything he could to bring this child back home safely.

"Kate's father here yet?" Aaron asked him.

"He's on his way," the Sheriff told him.

"Let me know the second he gets here," Aaron instructed, ready to move onto the next consideration.

The Sheriff looked puzzled, however, and he was a good man – simply unused to this kind of mess. "I told ya, we already checked out his alibi. He's not good for this."

"I know," Aaron agreed. "But he might know who is."

"Alright," Bates nodded, understanding, and shot over to the small bank of telephones and computers that was serving as a local hotline.

0o0

Grace stood at the head of Jeff and Nancy Hale's bed, watching the forensics team at work.

The level of violence in the room was compounded by the blood spatter, she knew; the cutting of a throat was the work of but a moment, but it was an act of particular depth and intimacy that spoke both of the unsub's need to dominate and his need for release. It was a method of killing that required strength, conviction and close proximity – not to mention a strong nerve. Unlike other forms of murder there really was no other outcome likely from slashing someone's throat open with a razor; the unsub would know going in that there would be no turning back and have to accept that before striking.

He hadn't needed to kill the parents in order to abduct the girl, that much was obvious from the fact that none of the occupants of the house appeared to have heard the window in the kitchen door shattering. These murders had been something he'd felt compelled to do – without them the abduction would have felt incomplete.

She frowned. It was highly unlikely that this was his first party, as it were. You needed confidence for this kind of killing. Confidence and absolutely no remorse.

Shifting slightly into the shadows of the world, she lifted slightly darkened eyes to the space beside the bed. Of Jeff Hale, there was no sign. His death had truly been the end of him, which was probably a blessing, Grace thought.

Nancy, though, was still there, standing just inside the glass of the mirror, watching Grace watch her.

"I'm sorry," Grace murmured, and the shadow in the mirror dropped her eyes to the bloodstained sheets.

She was already fading, Grace realised, caught between the horror of her death and the desire to protect her daughter. She wouldn't stay for long – a couple more hours at most. They would have to be quick.

"Anything you can tell me will help, if you are able," Grace said, her voice barely above a whisper. It didn't need to be loud; forensic officers and agents were crawling all over the house as it was – somewhere nearby, Morgan would be pacing around Kate's brightly coloured bedroom and Bo Whittaker was briefing Rossi out in the kitchen. They didn't need to hear this. She knew Nancy would. There were only the two of them here, in the liminal space between one breath and the next.

Nancy's shadow continued to stare at the bed she had lived and died in, a dreadful mixture of hers and her husband's blood dripping slowly from her chin and fingertips.

"I will do everything in my power to find the person who did this to you," she murmured.

Abruptly, and with a force that made Grace's head spin and ears pop, Nancy Hale met her gaze with the fierce, bottomless eyes of the recently dead. Words appeared in her mind as if they had been put there, though no one had spoken.

 _Save her. Save Katie. Save my little girl._

0o0

Emily looked up from the crime scene photos she had been examining on the interrogation table as Jordan Todd came in. Space was at a premium at the Sheriff's Office and she needed to assemble a file that had the most impact to shake a potential suspect – if they ever came up with one. This was looking more and more like a stranger abduction, and they were the hardest to solve.

"Is that the autopsy report?" she asked.

Jordan nodded in a business-like manner, handing it over. "Listen, about the plane –"

"Oh no, it's already forgotten," Emily assured her, her mind on other things.

Some cases got to people, and this one was a bad one – more so for Jordan, who probably still felt misplaced guilt at 'causing' the deaths of Norman Hill's family in California. Though it hadn't been her fault at all it was the kind of thing that stuck with a person. No one was going to hold her chastisement in the jet against her. Besides, she was right: they did separate themselves from the victims; emotional detachment was the only way to get through a case and not break down. Well, that and vodka…

Her thoughts trailed off as her eyes flicked rapidly through the photographs in Nancy Hale's autopsy report.

 _That can't be right…_

"What're you looking at?" Jordan asked, noting the change in her friend's expression.

"It's the neck wounds," Emily told her. "Something's off. Look…"

0o0

"Find anything in Kate's room?" Rossi asked, as Derek came into the bloody bedroom.

Rossi, Pearce and Whittaker were standing around the bed, trying to make sense of the mess of blood and sheets.

"That's what's weird," Derek told them, arriving at the end of the bed. "There's no sign of struggle. Didn't even look like she tried to get out of bed in a hurry."

"The unsub controlled her, made sure she went quietly," Pearce surmised, with a slight frown and a glance to her left; Derek followed her gaze, but there was nothing there. "What if there's more than one of them?" she asked, glancing back again.

It was as if she could see something in the mirror, but there was nothing there – just the room, reflecting it's horror back at them. The gesture wasn't lost on Rossi, either.

"What're you seeing?" he asked.

Pearce looked up, faintly surprised to discover both agents and the deputy looking at her. "Well, who does an unsub go for first?" she reasoned. "If he goes for the girl, the parents might wake up and discover him. So he comes here," she glanced behind her again. "Now who does he kill first?"

"This type of abduction, the man is generally killed first," said Derek, seeing where she was going.

"He's the protector, the bigger threat to the unsub," Rossi added.

"Cutting someone's throat isn't a gentle process." She gestured at the arterial spray on the walls "No one is going to sleep through that, particularly if some of it hits you in the face – but there's no sign of either of the Hales struggling. Which means two unsubs – either murdering the parents at the same time, or one to kill one with a knife, while the other controls the other victim."

Rossi nodded, following her. "Then they can go on to collect Katie undisturbed."

Derek raised an eyebrow. "There's two of them."

Deputy Whittaker looked between three equally sombre expressions. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"There would have to be – otherwise one of the adults would have woken up and alerted Kate," Pearce explained. "The fact that none of our three victims struggled suggests that this didn't happen."

Rossi's cell rang and he picked up. "Rossi. Hey Emily. You're sure? Thanks… That was Prentiss," he said, hanging up and putting his phone away. "She says Jeff Hale died from a single deep cut that severed the carotid artery. Nancy died from a series of shallow, hesitant wounds." He nodded at Whittaker as his fellow agents exchanged speaking looks. "Two unsubs – one highly experienced, confident, one inexperienced, a novice."

"A dominant and submissive partnership?" Derek suggested.

Pearce's eyes slid to the left again. "One older, one younger. Maybe very young. This might be the first time out for one of them. A nephew or a son, perhaps? Someone who the older male has complete control over."

 _Like a right of passage,_ Derek thought, but didn't say it aloud. There was nothing to support that yet. He pushed it to the back of his mind in case they needed it later.

"Alright, I gotta radio in and tell people we're lookin' for two perps instead o' one," said Whittaker briskly (or as briskly as he could, with his laconic accent). Rossi nodded and followed the deputy out.

Derek, however, looked back at Pearce, who was once again frowning at the mirror a little way off from her left elbow. "You alright?" he asked.

Surprised, she met his gaze. "Yeah," she replied, looking puzzled. "Why?"

Derek let his eyes go to the part of the mirror she had been so obviously distracted by and Pearce followed his gaze.

"Oh," she said. It struck Derek that she was doing some very quick thinking, though he couldn't guess why she would feel the need. "Massive spider. Went behind the bedside cabinet, though gods know how it fit. It was about the size of my hand. Think that thing could've given a witness statement."

He felt the corner of his mouth lift up and saw the answering smile form on his friend's face. Was it his imagination, or did she look marginally relieved?

"If these walls could talk, huh?" he joked, chuckling and she nodded, passing him on the way out of the door. He peered after her, mildly concerned.

It had been prettily done and she covered it extremely well, but Derek was both a profiler and her friend, and was therefore not so easily fooled.

But what reason could Pearce possibly have to lie?


	2. Family Matters

**Essential Listening: Ghost, by Halsey**

0o0

Aaron hurried from the room they were using as a makeshift tactical planning bunker and nodded at Sheriff Bates.

"Kate's father here?" he asked, briskly.

"In there," said the Sheriff, nodding at the break room – the only comfortable place they had where witnesses and family members could be put at ease for interview purposes.

"How's he look?" Aaron asked, sensing something the other man wasn't telling him.

The sheriff turned back to him, sighing. "Between you an' me, I cleaned up bar fights that smell better'n he does right now."

Aaron met his gaze, understanding the mix of sympathy and frustration on the sheriff's face. It was going to be tricky to keep the man focused if he was hungover or still drunk, particularly given the awful situation his daughter had found herself in. He gave Sheriff Bates a nod to show that he understood and headed into the break room prepared for an uphill struggle.

Jim Scheuren did smell like a brewery, but he didn't look so bad, all things considered. He was rubbing the back of his neck, his head in his hands, the very picture of stress, but he was clean, dressed and there – and that counted for a lot.

"Mr Scheuren," Aaron said, closing the door behind him. "I'm Aaron Hotchner, I'm with the FBI. Can I get you anything? Coffee?" he added, noting that the sheriff's assessment was completely accurate. He pulled a chair over so he could face the despondent, frightened, drunk man sitting on the couch of the break room.

"No, I can answer your questions," said Scheuren, correctly interpreting the offer as an attempt to sober him up.

Fragrance aside, he was clearly as focussed as he could be on finding his little girl. Good. Aaron could use that. Straight to business then.

"Do you know if your ex-wife and her husband have any enemies?" he asked.

Jim frowned and shook his head. "No. I mean – I don't know. I don't – I don't know." He shrugged helplessly.

"What about Kate?" Aaron asked, trying a different tack. "Has she talked about anyone new in her life?"

There was a sad look in Jim Scheuren's eyes that suggested he didn't know the answer to that question, either. "Well, she's a normal kid, you know?" he said hesitantly. "She meets new people all the time."

"This would be an adult," Aaron clarified. "Possibly a white male. He might be an authority figure to her."

Jim shook his head again, obviously distressed to be unable to help.

"The reason that I ask is that given the location of your ex-wife's house, we think someone has targeted Kate specifically," Aaron explained.

That got his attention – he could see it in his eyes, his sudden stillness – but it was no use. Aaron was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Jim Scheuren knew very little about his daughter's day-to-day life.

"No, sorry," he said – and sounded like he meant it.

 _This is going nowhere._

Aaron shook his head, covering his frustration. "Well, is there anything you can think of that you think might be helpful?"

Scheuren thought for a moment. "We like to go to the movies," he offered. "There's a new – uh – multiplex at the mall."

 _Target rich environment,_ Aaron thought. _Good for an unsub to scope out a potential target._ However, the man's lack of knowledge and general reluctance to meet Aaron's eyes got him thinking

"How often do you see Kate?" he asked, trying not to make it sound like an accusation.

"Uh… I have visitation every two weeks," Scheuren stuttered.

"Do you keep to that schedule?" Jim's face fell, became evasive, so Aaron continued before he could shut himself off. "The reason that I ask is that right now time is of the essence."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jim asked. He sounded tired, a little bitter, but aware that he has been letting Kate down – and that now, when she really needed him, he was letting her down again.

"With all due respect, sir, it means that if you can't add to my knowledge of Kate, my time is better spent somewhere else."

"Um…" the man sputtered, his eyes starting to tear up.

It was brutal, but that was the trouble with the truth sometimes: it hurt.

"I'll keep you posted with any developments," Aaron said, getting to his feet and shaking the man's hand again.

"Agent," said Jim, as he reached the door.

"Yes?"

"There's one thing – Kate's epileptic. Has been her whole life. Do you – do you think they thought to take her medication with them?"

"That's very helpful sir, thank you," said Aaron noncommittally, and left the room to call Morgan, who immediately found the tablets in their usual place – in the bathroom cabinet.

 _The stakes of this one just keep getting higher,_ he reflected, hanging up.

"What's up?" Todd asked, coming over with a stack of files in her hands.

"Kate Hale has epilepsy," he explained, his worries now increased tenfold. "And whoever took her didn't know to take her medication."

He watched the realisation of the depth of the situation pass across Jordan Todd's face. Sometimes he forgot how innocent people from off the team could be, he reflected.

"And the primary cause of seizures is stress," she said, in a hollow voice.

0o0

Emily hurried through the hospital corridor, Hotch and Jordan Todd in her wake.

They'd just finished breakfast when they'd got the call that Kate Hale had been found at the side of a road, tied up, gagged, and wrapped in a blanket, sick and exhausted from a night's exposure and shaking from the after-effects of several seizures – but alive. They had allowed the hospital two hours to tend to her and make her comfortable, given her age and her condition, but now time was of the essence. If she could remember enough about her parents' murderers then they had a shot at catching up with them.

Emily flashed her badge at the deputy who had been watching over the department ever since Kate had been brought in. He nodded and relaxed a little, giving them the space they needed to talk to the doctor, who had been waiting to meet them.

"Her father's with her," she said, without preamble. "She's been in and out of consciousness, but her vitals are stable."

"Any sign of sexual assault?" Emily asked, dreading the response.

"We haven't tested yet," the doctor admitted, grimacing. "We wanted to give her time to process."

"May we speak with her?" Jordan asked.

"You should know, seizures often come with retrograde amnesia," the doctor explained, which Emily supposed meant 'yes'. "She might have holes in her memory."

 _Great_ , thought Emily, sharing a speaking look with Hotch.

They followed the doctor to the private room Kate had been assigned, but Hotch stopped a few feet short. "Prentiss, you should do this alone."

"Okay," Emily agreed, continuing on her own. The deputy opened the door for her courteously. "Thanks deputy," she said, hoping his presence made the young girl inside the room feel a little more secure.

The occupants of the little room looked up. "Mr Scheuren, hello," said Emily, shaking his hand. He was standing over his daughter, caring and protective. It was a good sign; letting the kid know someone had her back, even after everything she had been through. "I'm Emily Prentiss, with the FBI. I would like permission to speak with your daughter."

She met Kate's eyes and the little girl swallowed, obviously anxious about reliving what she had been through.

Jim Scheuren nodded, but made no move to leave Kate's side. Another positive sign – but at the moment, less helpful. Not unexpected, however.

"I'm sorry, but I'd like to speak to Kate alone, if possible."

Jim stared at her. "Why?"

"I need – to ask her certain questions," Emily explained, as gently as she could. "And sometimes it's easier for a girl to answer those questions when there are no men present."

Jim Scheuren looked horrified, but Emily could feel Kate's eyes on her still, though she hadn't looked in her direction with more than the corner of her eye. A feeling of understanding was stealing over the girl's face.

"I'm her father," he began, ready to be steadfast and unmovable, if need be, but Kate interrupted.

"Dad… please?"

His expression was one of pain, but he acquiesced immediately, kissing his daughter gently on the head. "Alright baby. I'll be right outside."

Kate gave her father the smallest of smiles.

"Thank you," said Emily, waiting for the door to close behind him before sitting on the edge of Kate's bed. "Hi Kate, I'm Emily," she told her, gently, aware she had previously only addressed herself to the girl's father. "I'm so sorry about your mom and your stepdad."

Kate looked down and swallowed, trying not to cry. She hadn't had time to process that yet, and now wasn't the time.

"I'd like to ask you some questions so we can find out who did this – is that okay?"

"Yeah, it's okay," said Kate, with quiet determination.

0o0

Aaron met Jim Scheuren as he came out of his daughter's room, clearly uncomfortable that her ordeal had to continue a while longer.

"The doctors told me if the paramedics hadn't been alerted to her epilepsy, she might not have made it," Aaron told him, as the other man's grief at what might have been slid briefly across his face. "You helped save her life."

Scheuren was not a man of many words, but he sent Aaron a look of gratitude, all the same. "You seen this kind of thing before?" he asked.

"Unfortunately," Aaron admitted sadly.

"And kids come out of it okay?"

He nodded, but only a little. Kate had a hard road ahead of her – and a lonely one at times. "It'll take time," he said. "And patience. She's gonna need you."

Jim looked at him, his emotions finally threatening to break through the wall he had constructed to keep a comforting, strong face in front of his daughter. "You know, yesterday woulda been the first time I saw her in a month," he admitted, and Aaron read from his face how bad of a father he thought – he knew – he was.

But it didn't mean he had to keep on being. For a moment Aaron looked at Jim Sheuren's shoes, sharing a common pain.

"A colleague of mine asked me the other day how my son was enjoying the Christmas present he got for him – and I had to make up an answer, because I didn't know," he told him, painfully.

Scheuren nodded slowly, obviously surprised that an FBI agent who seemed to be so very much in control could have some of the same problems he was struggling with. He smiled slightly, with newfound humility. "I think I'll get that cup o' coffee now."

Aaron nodded, watching him go.

Good.

"The police sent the blanket and Kate's clothing to be processed," said Jordan, appearing from the nurse's station.

"Good." He hit the one number every agent of his team had on speed dial. "Garcia?"

" _Oh captain, my captain,"_ she said, cheerful this morning because of the lack of fresh corpses, but ready for action, because there were still two less fresh corpses that needed accounting for.

"I need a list of crimes involving partners in a ninety mile radius of Harvest in the last two years," Aaron requested.

" _All crimes?"_ she queried, already working.

"Anything. Violent crimes, break ins – whatever's in the system. I need to be able to show Kate some mug shots."

" _Got it,"_ Garcia assured him. _"One scumbag year book comin' up."_

"So you think they're local?" Jordan asked as he hung up, obviously following the conversation.

Aaron raised his eyebrows. "They dumped Kate eighty-four miles from her home. The sheriff who found her didn't think she'd been there long," he told her. It was something that had been bugging him ever since they'd heard she was okay. "With the unsub's head start they should have been long gone."

"So we're zeroing in on them,"Jordan suggested, determined to see the positive in a bad situation.

Aaron was not such an optimist, however. He shook his head in a sort of I-don't-know kind of way. "Possibly."

"So what's wrong?" she asked, having finally learned to read him.

"I don't know why they left her alive."

0o0

In the end, the cognitive interview only lasted half an hour. Realistically, you couldn't expect to put a victim through more than that in one go, whatever the stakes – especially one so young.

Aaron looked up from the forensic file he was reviewing on his phone when Prentiss came out of the room, closing the door behind her. She made a beeline for Jim Scheuren, who was hovering outside the room, bad hospital coffee in one hand a bundle of leaflets on how to sort out his life in the other.

Gently, she touched him on the shoulder. "Mr Scheuren? You have an incredibly strong little girl," she told him.

He nodded in thanks. "Did he touch her?"

"No. No – not in that way, no," she assured him and the man visibly deflated in sheer relief.

"Thank God." He touched her elbow in thanks before hurrying back into the room in case Kate needed him.

He waited for Prentiss to draw him to one side; there was obviously something urgent she needed to say. Something had come out of the interview that changed the dynamic of the profile – and had pissed her off.

"She was taken by a _family_ ," Prentiss told him.

"A family?" Aaron repeated, taken aback.

Prentiss's expression and body language accurately transmitted the words 'I know!' without her having to say it. "Parents and a little boy about her age. They took her from her house in a car and then into an RV. A short ride on a road, and then into a wooded area."

"She say anything else?" he asked.

"She said the mother called the boy 'puiule'," Prentiss said. "Which I think is a Romanian term of endearment. I know I used to hear it when my mom was posted overseas."

Aaron nodded briskly; that both narrowed their focus and broadened their pool of suspects. They needed to get moving again. "Get Rossi and Morgan to the closest RV parks," he instructed.

"Okay. What are we looking at here?" she asked, as they started walking, leaving Todd to brief the medical staff about the likelihood of an imminent, high press presence.

"I have no idea," he admitted. They left the ward and she peeled off in the direction of the elevators. Luckily they were all full, so he had an excuse to take the stairs, waving Prentiss into the nearest elevator on his way past and pulled out his cell. He didn't want her to hear this.

" _Pearce."_

"Kate was taken by a family."

" _A family?"_ Pearce repeated, in much the same way as he had. _"Well that's… staggeringly strange. Explains the inexperience of one of the killers."_

"Yeah, a young boy Kate's age."

" _I know,"_ she said sadly, which took him by surprise.

He narrowed his eyes.

"You know?"

" _Nancy Hale told me. I've been wondering how to persuade Morgan and Rossi of it without using the words 'the dead woman's ghost gave me a witness statement'."_

 _Good luck with that,_ Aaron thought.

"I thought you were going to call in if there was something useful," he admonished aloud, still heading down many flights of stairs. The children's ward was on the top floor, for reasons best known to the hospital administrators.

" _Useful, yes; admissible, no,"_ she reasoned. _"I didn't want us focussing the case before we could prove it. Might look weird when this goes to court."_

Aaron raised an eyebrow; she had a point. "Next time I would appreciate a heads up," he said.

" _I was halfway through a text when you called. Honest guv'nor,"_ she replied and he shook his head.

"Anything else at the crime scene?" he asked her, trying to avoid telling her he didn't believe her for a moment and that sometimes she could be a royal pain in the ass.

But then, this new area of investigation was new to him and reporting it to someone was new to her – in the States at least. It would take a little time for them both to adjust and learn the ropes.

She hesitated and he read a lot into that momentary pause.

 _I'm not going to like the answer, am I?_ he thought.

" _Nothing concrete,"_ she said, having weighed her options.

"You're going to have to be more precise."

" _Sorry boss, but I can't,"_ she said pensively. _"Something's weirding me out – like properly getting under my skin."_ He imagined her gazing around whatever room she was in, daring whatever it was to come out in the open. _"But it's not a ghost. More a feeling, like…"_

"Like what?" he asked, when the space between words got too long.

" _Like this is a place I should not be,"_ she replied.

"We're always somewhere we shouldn't be," he pointed out. "We're the FBI."

Death took people by surprise sometimes, even people who dealt with it on a regular basis. It could make you feel strange and out of place; it had happened to everyone on the team, Aaron included. It would be no stretch of the imagination for it to be happening to Pearce this time.

" _No, it's more than that,"_ she said slowly. _"Someone else's magic, maybe, but distant – like a song in the back of your head you can't remember the words to."_

 _Someone else's magic?_ he thought, surprised. _Now there's a world of trouble I didn't even entertain the possibility of._

"Are you sure?"

" _No – like I said, it's just a feeling."_

"Prentiss said Kate heard them use a Romanian term of endearment," he told her. "Does that change anything?"

There was another pause. _"You know, it might… I took a picture of some coloured glass at the scene – crushed into the ground in front of the Hales' back door – but there was no glass of that colour in the house. I checked."_

"But?"

He could hear it in her voice now; the intonation had changed, as if she actually might be understanding what had been bothering her all day.

" _I'll have to Google it to make sure, but I'm pretty sure there's an eastern European folk tradition that involves spreading and treading on coloured glass at the place you're undertaking your next endeavour. It's supposed to bless you with good fortune."_

Aaron stopped on the third flight from the bottom.

"And a… a folk tradition could make you feel uncomfortable?" he asked, somewhat dubious.

" _Well, yeah – where do you think magic went when people got all sciencey, after the enlightenment? It stayed in our memories as the stories our grandparents told."_ Just for a moment she had sounded exasperated with him and a little arrogant, like a teacher whose student had just said something very stupid. Working with Pearce was like seeing glimpses of another person, sometimes. _"Don't look down on folk magic just because it's got the word 'folk' in it – it's just as deadly as any other kind. Particularly if you underestimate it – or someone practicing it."_

0o0

"Is it a match?" Sheriff Bates asked, and Grace nodded, comparing the crushed glass Morgan was holding out in one gloved hand to the picture she had taken at the first crime scene.

"Which means the RV park owner was right," said Morgan. "They spread it on purpose."

Rossi pursed his lips thoughtfully. "So everything they do is part of some ritual."

"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Sheriff Bates asked.

"Family who ritualise killing together? Definitely not," Morgan told him.

"What were you saying about Eastern European rituals involving glass?" Reid asked, with a glance in Grace's direction.

"It's a good luck thing," she said, eyeing the glass warily. It had a sort of mental tang to it – like a taste at the back of her mouth. It was putting her a little on edge. She felt like telling Morgan to put it away and throw the gloves away, but she couldn't think of a way to say that without sounding like a total nutter.

 _Folk magic,_ she thought. _And strong stuff, from the feel of it. Maybe not a practitioner in the strictest sense, but definitely someone with skill. And intent._

"And if they're speaking Romanian…" Reid mused.

"You think they're Romanian?" Bates crossed his arms, unimpressed. "We already knew that."

"Not just Romanian – we're talking about a people that are highly superstitious and obsessed with ritual," Reid expanded.

Rossi frowned. "Romani?"

Grace frowned. "Romanian isn't the only Romani dialect," she said. Most of the Romani she had come across had been straightforward, generally law-abiding people. "For a family to do something like this they would have been ostracised by the rest of their travelling group," she said. "The others would never allow it. Though it would make the glass make sense."

 _And the magic,_ she added privately.

"Romani?" the sheriff asked.

"Gypsies," Morgan explained.

Grace winced, surprised. _Really? That word covers so many itinerant groups it's unreal. Isn't it a little early in the new century to be generalising so unthinkingly?_

"More accurately, someone who has perverted Romani culture," Reid clarified, to her relief.

"So it could be someone emulating Romani culture to feed their own perverted world view," said Grace. "And that's a tricky world to get into, so if it is someone from outside it might be easier to find them."

"Why do you keep pronouncing Romani incorrectly?" Reid asked, with a frown.

She gave him a Look. "What makes you think I'm the one getting it wrong?"

"Alright, Gypsy Rose Lee," Morgan quipped and Grace stared at him, incredulous.

Rossi ignored the interchange. "Call Garcia. Romani are typically tight nit and nomadic, like our unsubs, but not usually prone to violence," he explained to Sheriff Bates.

" _Hiya baby,"_ Garcia purred.

Morgan grinned. "Hi Babygirl, we need to talk."

" _PG or NC-17?"_

"You're on speakerphone," Morgan informed her in a sing-song voice.

" _I charge extra for groups."_

Even Sheriff Bates snorted, though his eyebrows had long since disappeared skywards.

"We need you to run through crimes similar to the Hale murders in the last two years," said Rossi.

" _Oh, I already did that,"_ Garcia replied. _"Zip."_

"Go back even further, Garcia," said Reid. "Cross-reference against any small towns that have had reports of petty theft associated with waves of Romani populations entering the area."

" _Romani?"_

"Gypsies," said Rossi.

"Gypsies?" Garcia gasped, making Grace groan internally. _"As in 'Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves?'"_

"Exactly," said Morgan, at precisely the same moment as Grace said, " _No_."

"What?" Morgan asked.

Grace rolled her eyes at him.

Garcia seemed not to have noticed, however. _"Oh, bless you all for turning my life into a Cher song!"_ she cried, delighted. _"You will have it nearly immediately."_

"You're the best," Morgan told her, then hung up.

"You need to get your men together right now," said Rossi, turning to the sheriff.

"Why's that?"

"Because whatever ritual these people are trying to play out, we know Kate Hale didn't fit their needs," Reid responded.

"Which means they'll have to try again," Morgan explained.

Sheriff Bates gave them all a look of mounting horror before hurrying off to round up his people, Rossi on his heels – presumably to find and warn Todd.

Morgan frowned at Grace. "What've you got against Cher?" he quipped, but Grace was not amused.

"Are you serious?" she asked, aware that while Reid wasn't saying anything he was watching her curiously from under his lashes.

"Yeah," Morgan chuckled.

She paused, trying to think of an adequate way to get her point across. "Well, let me put it this way: it would be like asking to look into cases involving African American unsubs and one of us making a crack about how y'all dance well and jump high."

The smile fell off Morgan's face in an instant. "Hey, hey, there's no call for that," he protested.

"No, there isn't. And there's no call for trivialising a people with a rich and varied culture with a shit song someone wrote in the eighties."

"What're you saying?" he asked, a little defensively.

"I'm saying that there's a serious danger of stereotyping here and we need to be aware of it – and make sure it stays out of the profile, or it will do more harm than good, particularly for any itinerant community migrating through the area in the near future."

She stalked over to the little kitchen in the back of the office and searched the cupboards for a decent packet of tea. Although she usually packed her own, she had come to the end of it the day before. Apparently, although the constabulary of Harvest, Alabama, had heard of tea, it either tasted of lemon or cinnamon.

Irritated, she gave up and settled for an uninspiring mug of hot water.

"You're right, you know."

Grace glanced behind her to discover Reid had followed her. He started making a cup of coffee next to her.

"I know I am." She sighed. "I just don't like the way we slip so easily into racism and that that's okay because they're outsiders. Itinerant groups catch all the poor opinions of a region they happen to be passing through, and take the blame for all the stuff that goes wrong, irrespective of guilt or logic. I had enough of this back in London and I don't want to deal with it now – particularly not from Morgan and Garcia." She stirred the hot water unnecessarily with a teaspoon that had seen better days. "It just gets on my wick."

"We need to emphasise that this is one isolated family perverting a tradition," Reid said, when she had finished.

"Yeah, and keep any whiff of cultural connotations as far from the press as physically possible," she agreed.

Reid toyed with his own spoon, watching her along his shoulder for a moment. "Something's getting to you," he said.

Grace glanced at him. It wasn't an accusation or an admonition, simply a statement of fact. An offer of – what, exactly? Friendship? No. There was something still between them that was a little too sour for that. An ear, perhaps – a means of unburdening.

She took it. "Nancy Hale was at the crime scene still," she said, lowering her voice.

Reid nodded, suddenly understanding. "Headache?"

Grace gave him a flicker of a smile at his thoughtfulness, even toward people he didn't like very much. "No, just a sense of futility." She scrubbed a hand over her face and leaned against the counter beside him; he turned too, sipping his coffee, leaning his hip against the worktop. It was friendly, but closed off at the same time. "There's something rotten here. Not just the killing. Something… I don't know."

He glanced around to make sure they wouldn't be overheard, taking her vagueness as a distinct cue. "You think there's something occult here?"

She pulled a face. "Not – not precisely. I don't know. It's more than spreading glass for good luck, at any rate."

Gods it felt good to talk this through with someone who was used to it. Hotch was still too new to it; he kept expecting information she couldn't give him.

"Something they're doing to the victims?"

"No… no I don't think so," she replied. More like something around them – something keeping other people away. Something that triggers an instinct."

"Like… Like when you didn't want anyone to disturb you in the park last year?" he asked quietly.

Grace's eyes flew to Reid's face. She knew exactly what he was talking about*, when the grief of losing her son had resurfaced on his birthday and she had sat on the frosted ground of a park in Virginia until the stars had come out. She had used a kind of glamour that time, a variant on an emotional trigger, laid out in a web, to make anyone think twice about approaching – or suddenly remember a pressing engagement elsewhere, depending on their disposition.

It hadn't worked on Reid, but she hadn't realised he had sensed it.

"Yes, a little like that," she said, wondering why he had never mentioned it.

He nodded, apparently unaware of her surprise. "You told Hotch?"

Grace looked at him for a moment. Although she had had no opportunity to relay the information that Hotch had witnessed some spectacular magic in Portland before Christmas, and subsequently decided to put her skills to use instead of firing her (much to her relief), she supposed their behaviour had adjusted slightly and Reid was a very good profiler.

"Yeah," she admitted. "But it's not really useful until I know what it is, and if it's something dangerous that might well be too late." She frowned, genuinely concerned. "Look, do me a favour, yeah? Don't let anyone touch anything without gloves, okay? I know it's weird, just…"

"No, I got you, some things transfer through touch," he said, and then added, on her look, "I – uh – I read up."

"I remember," she said and they shared a small, rare smile.

She jumped as her mobile went off in her pocket. Reid immediately turned away as she answered, though if it was to afford her some privacy or because he didn't want to know who was calling, she couldn't guess.

"Hi. Yes – oh, hello…" she said, surprised. "Um. Yeah, Harvest. I'm here on a case, I – Look, I can't really talk now, I'm about to go into a meeting. Okay. Okay, bye…" She hung up, frowning at her phone for a moment. "That was weird."

"What?" Reid asked, apparently not as indifferent as he had pretended.

"Oh um, my um," she swallowed and mentally changed direction. "Lily's brother heard I was in town. The family lives not far from here."

"Oh," he said and nodded, taking a sip of coffee. Then: "Lily, huh?"

He stared at her, one eyebrow slightly raised, just long enough to raise a slight smile on her face.

"Yeah – uh, sorry about that," she said, with grace. "Morgan walked right into it and it was too funny not to carry on."

"You and your hobbies," he joked, turning away.

Grace frowned. The line had been delivered flippantly enough, but there was something in his body language that told her he was significantly more annoyed than he was letting on.

0o0

*See Moments of Grace – Season Three, Act Two: Evidence of Absence


	3. Stockholm Syndrome

**Essential listening: The One I Love, by R.E.M.**

0o0

Dave watched the last of the officers slip through the door at the back of the room and find a place to sit among the desks and filing cabinets of the Harvest Sheriff's Station. They were all eager, all a little wired on coffee, stress and too little sleep. It was a scene he had grown used to over the years. This time with the added frisson of not knowing when or where these unsubs would strike next – only that it would be soon, and there would be multiple victims.

 _I'm getting too old for this,_ he thought.

"The unsubs we're looking for are a family," said Hotch as everyone passed the profile handouts around the room. "A father, a mother – and a son, approximately ten years old. We believe they're of Romanian descent."

"The family travels in an RV, but they also have another vehicle that they use to go back and forth between campsites and cities," said Dave. "We need you to call every RV park in the area. Alert the owners to be on the look out for a family that fits this description, as well as a campsite that might have broken glass scattered around."

"The breaking of the glass – and the 'discarding' of Kate Hale because of her epilepsy – leads us to believe that these are highly superstitious people," said Pearce. "And that they are playing out a very specific ritual."

"The focus of this ritual is the young girls," Dave added.

"Do we know why?" The question came from an unfamiliar deputy who must have been drafted in from another county.

"No, but we do know – from the location of Kate Hale's house – that they don't come across thee girls by accident," Dave replied. "They study. They hunt."

"The first murder was carefully planned out," Pearce told them. "They came prepared, bringing a murder kit and the glass they needed to complete their ritual. They aren't doing this on a whim – it holds a much deeper meaning for them that we can recognise at this time."

"Kate's father said that she liked to go to the movies at their local multiplex," Hotch added. "That's a good place to start."

"Also look at the parks, malls," said Dave. "Concentrate on those that are an easy drive from the RV parks you locate."

"This family is out there and they're looking for their next victim," Hotch added, as if they needed another reminder.

The door to the room the team had commandeered slammed open and Morgan hurried out of it. "You guys need to see this _right now_."

Hotch glanced into the rest of the room, but the assembled officers had already started moving away. "Excuse us."

Dave and Pearce followed Hotch and Morgan into their temporary situation room. Reid was clutching a sheaf of files and peering worriedly at the board, as though all hell had broken loose on the archive end of this business.

Dave frowned. That couldn't be good.

"What's goin' on?" Hotch asked as Pearce closed the door behind them.

"Garcia, you still there?" Morgan asked.

" _Present!"_

"Okay explain what you got," Morgan instructed.

" _Okay. I went ahead and went further back, looking for similar cases, and I made the search national."_

There was a sense of urgency to her voice now that put the entire room on edge. It wasn't often Garcia had the air of someone about to make life much, much harder. The table was covered in print-outs and it began to dawn on Dave that they were all related.

"All these are hits?" he asked, alarmed. He picked the nearest one up; it was the report of a missing girl whose parents had been murdered in 1993.

Beside him, Pearce was also scan reading the top pages. "Oh _no_ ," she breathed.

Behind them, the printer was still going, spewing out file after file.

" _Oh yeah,"_ said Garcia unhappily. " _There's thirty of them. They go back as far as 1909. Rapid City, South Dakota. Taos, New Mexico. Gary, Indiana. My map is –"_ Her voice faltered in horror – or anger. It was hard to tell – she was a mirror for their own emotions. _"Lit up like a Christmas tree."_

"All these girls were abducted and had their parents killed?" Hotch asked, visibly staggered.

"This can't be a coincidence," Pearce reasoned.

"The time between the kills was long enough and the regions of the country so spread out that it never showed up as serial," said Reid, who had had more of a chance to read through them all.

Dave voiced what they were all thinking. "What the hell is this?"

"I don't know, but it looks like it's been goin' on for generations," said Morgan darkly.

"Generations," Pearce echoed. "Wait a minute – how long are the gaps? How long is the shortest gap?"

" _That would be… just over fifteen years,"_ Garcia informed her.

"Hmm…"

Dave shared a look with Hotch. There was definitely something going on behind Pearce's frown. You could almost hear the cogs turning

"Hmm," she said again. "Okay. This is going to sound completely bonkers – and quite squicky, but what if they're taking child brides?"

There was a brief, horrified silence.

"Child brides?" Hotch repeated, looking appalled.

"How'd you figure?" Morgan asked.

"There was this case in Europe a couple of years back," she explained, speaking quickly. "A Roma community in Romania itself hosted a wedding for the young daughter of the self-styled 'king of the gypsies'. It made international news because she stormed out on video and then was made to go back in. I think the father made a public u-turn afterwards, saying he regretted putting her and the boy (who was her age) through it. He's an advocate for girls' education now…"

" _I guess all creeps have a silver lining,"_ Garcia remarked.

"But after that we had a watch list for girls with Roma families travelling to and from the UK in case they were involved in child marriage," Pearce continued. "Now, if this group is perverting Roma culture –"

"Then maybe they're taking girls from outside their family as brides," Reid finished.

Garcia spluttered something about the girls only being ten years old, but it made a horrible sort of sense to Dave.

"They're keeping these girls for years – why aren't they running away?" he asked, determined to test the theory, no matter how distasteful it felt.

"That's why there's a gap – it gives a few years for the girls to be brainwashed into accepting their new reality entirely, and then they're ready to raise children of their own," Pearce explained.

Across the room, Reid sank into a chair and rubbed his hand over his face.

0o0

The call that their family of unsubs had struck again had come in not twenty minutes after their case had taken a turn for the weird and unpleasant. The news that another young family had been ripped apart had galvanised all of them.

Morgan pulled up outside another ordinary looking house in Madison, Alabama and they all slid out of their seats, grumbling about the unfairness of it all. But there was no time to dwell on that; they had another little girl to find.

"Reid, Pearce and I'll check inside," Morgan announced.

Grace nodded, following the boys along the path that led to the front door.

Sheriff Bates met the others by the SUV. "We've doubled our highway patrol shifts and we've got roadblocks at every county line," he said, as Grace passed him.

"Is her picture on the wire?" Todd asked.

"Pulled one out of her bedroom myself," Bates told her.

The little party moved on, leaving Bates, Todd and Rossi behind. Morgan peeled off before the front steps and Grace saw him stoop to examine something in the grass by the porch.

 _More glass._

The feeling of being somewhere she shouldn't stole over her as she followed Reid inside, pervading all her senses until its influence was complete. She braced herself against it, wary for anything deeper or darker.

The more she came into contact with the magic the family left behind, the more she was convinced they weren't dealing with someone who knew what they were doing. It was rough and raw, which only made it all the more dangerous, but unskilled; it lacked the precision or direction of someone who had learned the details of what they were doing. The intent was all too clear, however.

She would have to keep her eyes peeled on this one, she decided.

Reid had headed deeper into the house so she moved towards the back, where the unsub had come in through the back door. Behind her, she heard Morgan begin to move through the house.

 _Well, at least they're consistent_ , she thought, surveying the broken glass above the handle.

There was a forensic technician by the door, carefully teasing something from the shards of glass that remained at the door.

"Got something?" she asked him, and he held up a small evidence bag containing small strands of white thread.

"Must be whatever they wrapped their hand in to smash the glass," he said. "Might have more info when it's gone through the lab, but it's a long shot."

"Better than nothing," said Grace. "If they keep whatever they used around we could tie it to them – or if they used it to wipe the blood from the knife and discarded it, and it's one of a set of somethings, that could give us an edge."

The technician nodded. "I'll have them analyse for organic matter too. You never know."

Grace left him to it and headed towards the bedroom, trying to ignore the sense of wrongness permeating the air. Here the feeling had been displaced by another kind of wrongness. There was arterial spray everywhere; on the bed, on the walls, on the ceiling. There was so much of it she could taste its sharp metallic tang on the back of her tongue.

She joined Reid by the bed, surveying the scene sadly. There was no one lingering here this time, though she had half expected it. Some people became ghosts, some didn't.

"What a mess," she reflected quietly.

Reid 'hmm'ed his agreement.

Both of them looked up as Morgan came in.

"This is what I don't get," said Reid, frowning solidly at the bed. "In both this and the Hale's house the girls' bedrooms were closest to the exits. I mean the unsubs actually had to go outta their way to kill the parents before abducting the girls."

Grace nodded. It was bothering her too. She had initially put it down to being part of the ritual, but it couldn't just be that. No matter how weird or out of sync with reality a ritual had become there was always a grain of something tethering the original practice to logic.

"I figure it was a countermeasure," Morgan told them.

"Why?" Reid asked.

"They've been doin' this for years and never been caught," the other agent replied. "Why?"

Reid gave a sort of facial shrug. "They disappear in the dead of night, they have a head start on the cops and they don't kill again for years," he summed up.

"The girls' parents are dead," Grace said, joining the dots Morgan was laying out for them. "There's no one looking for them – and they have nowhere to run to."

Morgan nodded. "Exactly. When I was a cop I would get ten calls a day from parents with child abductions." All three of them grimaced. "Now, as sad as that is, if families didn't' stay on ya – at a certain point other cases started takin priority."

Grace nodded. "There's limited resources – if something goes cold and there's no one to remind you, with the best will in the world, old cases fall off the map."

"And if they're keeping the girls as child brides," Reid said, understanding, "there's never a body to find."

0o0

Aaron rubbed a frustrated hand over his face. Although the concept of abducting child brides had brought up the possibility, he had never really expected one of their present unsubs to have been a previous victim. It was like something out of a pulp novel you picked up at the airport.

But Garcia had had the lab run the DNA twice: the genetic material they had extracted from the hair follicles in the blanket Kate Hale had been wrapped in when she was dumped at the side of the road was as close to a one hundred percent match as they were ever going to get.

" _A working theory from 1971 was that a transient family killed the parents and then abducted Kathy Gray,"_ Garcia told them. _"Then all of the leads went cold."_

"How do you watch your family get murdered and then make a life with the people who did it?" Todd asked in exhausted disbelief.

"It's Stockholm Syndrome," Rossi explained. "You adapt or die."

"And now she's training her son to be a murderer," Emily observed.

Aaron glanced around the room. The entire team sounded as tired and disaffected as he felt – here was one more little girl no one had been able to save. It was unlikely, even if they caught up with her, that they would be able to undo the damage of the trauma and brainwashing at this stage. And it would be hard to redeem her, after she had willingly taken part in two double murders and the abduction of two young girls. Even if it was fairly likely that she was the reason they hadn't killed Kate Hale when they had discovered her epilepsy.

"At a certain point, once traditions are handed down generation after generation, there is no right or wrong," Hotch expanded. "You simply accept the way the world works."

"The Romani are a closed society in many ways," said Reid. "These unsubs simply twisted and distorted traditions to become entirely insular."

 _And entirely geared towards murder._

Morgan agreed. "Abducting the children keeps the bloodline pure and killin' the parents means we eventually stop lookin' for 'em."

"It's a sound system," Pearce reflected. "And not getting caught reinforces the distorted worldview for the next generation."

The door opened and they looked up to see Sheriff Bates; there was a certain steeling of selves as they waited for what could be yet more bad news. "We've got a report of an RV on fire about twenty miles from here."

Aaron raised an eyebrow. They were starting afresh, probably realising that the local law enforcement were onto them. It gave the team a window, though, (albeit one that was rapidly closing) and they may have left behind more than they knew.

"Dave – you, Reid and Morgan go check it out," he instructed.

"I want to go, too," said Pearce unexpectedly, getting to her feet with the others. "There's something I want to check on about the glass."

She met Hotch's gaze from across the room: steady, determined and calm. There was an edge of a question there, too. He thought about it for the briefest of moments. It was weird for her to volunteer to attend a fire scene, given her history, but she seemed to have more of a handle on the 'ritual' side of things this time out – and her reference to the glass, along with her earlier warning about dismissing folk magic, made his mind up for him.

"Right," he said, and she joined her fellow agents as they hurried out of the door. "Garcia, I need you to digitally alter Kathy Gray's photograph to simulate what she would look like today."

If there was a chance the family were still in the area, that could give them the hook they needed to bring them in.

" _Consider it simulated."_

0o0

As they pulled up to the scene of the RV fire there were three or four fire fighters and cops being sick in the bushes.

"Bad one?" Rossi asked the Sheriff, who had got there five minutes before so as to be able to brief them.

"No – no bodies," said the Sheriff, which surprised Spencer. "Think there's a bug goin' round."

He set off towards the RV without a second thought, leaving four agents who were used to thinking in terms of biological threats and health hazards behind him, sharing wary glances.

"It could just be a bug," said Rossi slowly.

"We should call it in, even if we only have a shred of doubt," Pearce pointed out.

Morgan looked around, his face a little pinched. "We lose these guys now, we lose them forever," he said. "We can't afford to slow this down right now."

"We wait and see if we start feeling sick," said Rossi, with some finality, and the four of them moved forward without hesitation, fully accepting the potential risks.

"It was started less than an hour ago," said Bates, running his flashlight over the body of the RV. "So they can't be far."

The mobile home was pretty much just a shell now, the burnt innards of which had been dragged outside to slow the fire down. The acrid stench of hot metal and burning plastic filled the air. Reid glanced at Pearce, aware of what the assault on the senses might be raising in her memory, but she looked resolute – if a little pale – so he turned his attention back to the RV.

There was something weird about it, but he couldn't put his finger on it – like a note out of place in a familiar song. He fought the urge to scratch the back of his neck; he didn't want to have to get out a new pair of gloves already.

Morgan bent to stir the remains with a gloved hand. "Looks like they left almost everything."

Suddenly, and he didn't quite know how he knew, Pearce stopped dead in her tracks. It made him clench his fists, and he realised, as he sent her a look along his shoulder, that something here was making his skin crawl.

 _Is this what happened to those other guys?_ He thought.

He shot Pearce a questioning look, wondering if she could feel it too. It was a fair bet that she could, the more he looked at her: her fists were clenched, too her knuckles showing white even through the blue of the gloves. She shivered.

 _Don't touch anything,_ she mouthed, noticing his attention, and he gave her the slightest of nods.

He wasn't about to – not without gloves, anyway. It felt like a thousand ants were crawling over his skin; the mad urge to brush them all off was building inside him, but he pushed it down. It was beginning to really get on his nerves.

 _Something that triggers an instinct,_ he thought.

"They got the girl they wanted. They're startin' over," Rossi guessed.

"Look at the clothes," said Morgan, picking one up. In Spencer's peripheral vision, Pearce visibly flinched, but no one commented.

 _At least he's wearing gloves,_ Spencer thought.

"Some still have the store's sensors on 'em."

"So how'd they get 'em past the security scanners?" Bates asked.

"Tin foil," Spencer explained, nudging some with the tip of his boot.

"Excuse me?"

Spencer glanced up at the Sheriff just in time to catch the end of Pearce's coat disappearing around the far side of the RV.

"Um… Kate Hale remembers being locked in a closet surrounded by clothing and tin foil, he said," hoping he was giving her the time she needed to do something about the thing that was rapidly and insistently climbing up his spine.

A forensic technician who had been processing some of the burnt material from the RV put his tools down rather quickly and rushed off to be sick. Rossi watched her go, frowning, before follows to check on her.

"Shoplifters use tin foil to line their bags and negate security alarms," Morgan explained.

"It also explains the bells she heard," said Spencer, spotting one. He picked it up with a gloved hand before remembering he shouldn't and dropped it back on the pile. "Katie said she heard the sound of bells, followed directly by the father talking to the son. I think that's probably what the mannequin's for."

 _Well, in for a penny, in for a pound,_ he thought, and picked up a scorched articulated dummy arm.

"The School of the Seven Bells…"

Sheriff Bates was watching him, perplexed. "You lost me."

"You dress a mannequin, you line a suit with seven bells," Morgan explained and Bates began to nod in understanding. "If you can pick his pocket without a bell ringing you're ready to work a crowd."

"So we know how they made their money," said Bates.

"That's not all we know," said Rossi, coming back. "You got a lot of sick guys today."

"I told you, it's a bug. "

"Might be worth checkin' for dangerous substances," said Morgan, shifting uncomfortably. "Gotta admit, I don't feel great."

"Yeah…" Spencer agreed, hoping that whatever Pearce was doing, she would do it soon. He was beginning to feel faintly nauseous himself.

"I'll have a word with the fire crew," suggested Rossi, departing before the Sheriff could stop him.

"These unsubs are guided entirely by ritual," Spencer reflected. "They abducted Evelyn Robelard in an area that they knew was swarming with police and the FBI . They had to. They can't deviate."

"We also know they're starting over," Morgan put in. "Which means they're gonna need some money. Where's the closest shopping mall?"

Bates thought for a moment. "'Bout fifteen miles from here."

Morgan's cell was already out of his pocket. "Hotch, we know where they're goin'."

All at once, the feeling of barely controlled distress left him and Spencer looked up.

 _She must've killed whatever was set up to do this to us,_ he thought.

Curious, he walked around the body of the RV, where to his surprise, Pearce was having an argument on her phone.

"No, I really can't get away. Yes, I know – but that's –"

 _Maybe she didn't do anything and it just wore off on its own,_ he thought, but then she looked up and noticed him and he got a good look at her eyes.

Her pupils were insanely wide – almost the whole of her iris was gone, leaving only a narrow band of blue, made all the more unsettling by the contrast with the black. The quality of the black was strange, too, as if it held much more depth than just the cavity inside her eyeball.

Spencer swallowed.

She didn't appear to have noticed his reaction, however, since whomever had called her was clearly doing a good job of irritating the hell out of her.

"No, I'm not deliberately putting you off!" she snapped, beginning to lose her temper. She rolled her eyes at Spencer, which was particularly weird given how odd they looked. "That's all very well, but I'm afraid tracing a missing ten year old whose parents have just been murdered rather takes priority over a social engagement I didn't agree to come to in the first place. Goodbye." She hung up and shoved her cell back in her pocket, clearly annoyed. "Some people!" she grumbled, and met his gaze. "Troy's family," she explained.

 _So that's 'Lily's' real name_.

"Families are tricky," he found himself saying.

"You're right there." She sighed heavily. "Did it work, by the way?"

"What?" he asked, and then realised she was referring to the lack of phantom ants. "Oh, yeah. Well, I feel less… crowded at least."

"Good." She looked at the RV. "Nasty little thing, that was, but not permanently damaging."

She made a move towards the front of the RV, and suddenly Spencer was seized by the notion that people in law enforcement might make their own minds up about a pupil size like that.

"Um, Pearce – your – your eyes," he said, catching her elbow.

"My…" she met his worried gaze and seemed to understand. "Oh, have they gone weird?"

He nodded mutely. It was still kind of freaking him out – like someone had replaced her normal, human eyes, with something disproportionate, that a manga or anime character might have.

"Ah bollocks, I thought I'd be okay." She grimaced. "I… had to look for the source of it and sometimes the place I have to look – messes with my eyes."

Spencer swallowed. He'd read about it, back when they'd been fast friends and he'd wanted to know everything about her – and about her weird skills.

"Liminal space," he said, and saw her weird, overly dark eyes widen slightly.

"Yes, that's what Lemuel Grey calls it," she said, surprised.

They regarded one another for a moment, like strangers who had suddenly found common ground.

 _Or old friends who had remembered what it was like not to be enemies anymore,_ he thought.

Belatedly, he realised he was still holding onto her elbow and dropped his hand.

"Um, maybe just try to keep your gaze low until we get back in the SUV," he suggested, eliciting the faintest of smiles.

She looked away and then back again, and gave him a look that was equal parts amusement and frustration (and maybe the slightest hint of affection), her head tilted to one side.

"You know, that scarf really suits you," she said, to his utter confusion, and then shook her head (possibly at herself). "Come on," she said, the smile on her face turning rather more humourless. "Bad guys to catch."

And with that she strode off around the side of the RV, leaving him behind her, entirely baffled.

"Guys," said Morgan, when Spencer had convinced his feet to start moving. "Just got a call from Hotch – they got her."

"Evelyn Robelard?" Pearce asked hopefully; Spencer noticed she had pulled her fringe down over her eyes a little to conceal them.

"Kathy Gray. They caught her shoplifting at the mall."

Pearce looked up sharply, then immediately at Spencer. "Now, is it just me," she said, "or does that feel way too easy?"


	4. Obedience

**Essential listening: Fourth of July, by Fall Out Boy**

 **0o0**

Hotch was pacing, patrolling the perimeter of the interview room like a caged tiger dying to strike. In contrast, Emily was static, keeping her body language conciliatory and open, treating the woman at the centre of the room like the victim she had been when she was a child.

She was displaying every classic behavioural symptom of someone who had been programmed from a young age to accept an alternative, perverted worldview; she had been punished for thinking differently until that was no longer necessary and she could self-police her own views. She was hostile to the society who had no place for her or her family, and loyal to the ones she loved to the very end, no matter what they did or caused her to do.

So far, she had been sullen and uncooperative – not that they had expected anything different, really – and had confessed to the murders of both the Hales and the Robelards.

A tough nut to crack, as they might say at the Academy.

"Kathy, I can't help you if you're not going to be honest with me," said Emily gently, laying a hand down on the table in a frustrated but non-threating gesture.

"I already told you," Kathy repeated. "I killed them."

She was so deeply embedded in the social construct that had driven her family to murder and abduct children for generations that it was going to take a little trust to crack her – and a little helpful persuasion.

"All by yourself?" Hotch asked, still patrolling the perimeter of the room, the movement calculated to put the woman who was both witness, suspect and victim on edge.

Kathy replied without hesitation. "Yes."

"I know that's not true," Emily told her, shaking her head.

"It is," Kathy responded simply.

"How did you do it?" Hotch asked, coming to a stop and leaning on the table. He put himself directly in Kathy's eyeline, but she angled herself more towards Emily.

 _Good_ , she thought, watching her body language.

"How did you abduct a child and control two adults while you slit their throats?" Hotch asked.

Kathy looked down at the table, obviously intimidated by his dominant posture, but not enough to give them anything. It was obvious that she was lying.

"Oh, come on," Emily complained at Hotch, sounding annoyed. "You know she's not responsible for this."

"I know we have a string of bodies and _she_ knows where her husband and son are," he replied, as if they were arguing. As if any one of them would, in front of an unsub.

They needed to shatter her carefully maintained wall of calm.

"You are the victim here," Emily reassured her.

"No she's not! She killed innocent people!" Hotch reminded her, his voice rising a notch.

"Her family was murdered!" Emily protested.

Hotch made a show of rolling his eyes. "And now she's killing other people's!"

"Kathy," Emily said, apparently giving Hotch up as a bad job, "this is not your fault."

"My name isn't Kathy," Kathy insisted, getting annoyed. "It's Sylvia."

"No," Emily told her gently. "It isn't. Your name is Kathy Gray, and you were a beautiful little girl." She pulled the school photo of Kathy that police had distributed at the time of her abduction from the file. It was hard to tell, but Emily thought the whole set up was beginning to have an impact on her.

Kathy shook her head and looked away.

"Your mom and dad were murdered – and you were kidnapped." Emily pushed the photo in front of her where she couldn't ignore it. "Do you recognise yourself there?"

It was clear that she did, but this kind of conditioning was notoriously difficult to break.

Emily met Hotch's eyes over Kathy's head; it was time to change this up a gear.

"You see?" Emily cajoled.

Hotch slammed his hands down onto the table, making both women jump, even though Emily had been expecting it. "I'm sick of this!" he shouted.

For a fraction of a second, Emily couldn't help but stare at him. Usually, Hotch's emotions were kept carefully and check, and to see him so openly angry (even if it was just for show) was deeply unsettling. The anxiety on her face when she turned to Kathy was entirely genuine.

"Then leave us alone!" she snapped.

"Where are your husband and son?" he demanded, apparently ignoring her.

Kathy stared at him with open contempt as he glared directly at her.

Emily fought to regain her attention. "Look at me, Kathy. Don't listen to him. They _stole_ your life!" She reached out and touched the woman's elbow, putting them on the same level. "Let me help you get it back."

But Hotch was definitely getting to the woman now. "That little girl is better off with _my_ son than any man she could meet in your society," she snarled into Hotch's face, barely inches from her own.

"I'm sure you raised him very well," Emily said soothingly, as Hotch stared her down with the contemptuous expression he usually reserved for child murderers and people who didn't get their reports in on time. "Tell me about your mother."

"I've already told you everything!" she exclaimed, frustrated. " _I_ killed them. All by myself."

0o0

Jordan was leaning against the two-way glass of the interrogation room, watching the pantomime playing out inside. Pearce was a few feet away, her arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

Even though they both knew it was all for show, seeing the angry, darker side of Hotch was pretty unsettling, and that was without knowing what had been done to the woman he was trying to break.

What was probably beginning to happen to Evelyn Robelard.

Jordan sighed, and just on the periphery of her vision, Pearce nodded in acknowledgement. They had a front row seat on the darkest parts of life.

Both women glanced up as the rest of the team came in.

"How's it going?" Reid asked, as he, Derek and Rossi took up positions where they could observe the horror show in the interrogation suite – and be ready to move when the time was right.

"They're tryin' to crack her by reminding her of the girl she used to be," Jordan said in a hollow voice.

This job used people up and spat them out colder, she mused. None of the other agents seemed affected by the turmoil that was raging inside her at the injustices suffered by these little girls and their families. On the surface they seemed calm and collected, waiting for any shred of useful information to fall from Kathy Gray's lips, but Jordan was learning to read the signs.

They would work off the horror she couldn't help but feel later, in their own ways, safely compartmentalising it until they could afford to lose focus. It was a skill she had not developed during her time with them – and one she hoped she never did, for all she liked and respected these people.

"Good cop, bad cop," Pearce reflected. "It's an old one, but still surprisingly effective."

Reid nodded, a sombre expression on his young face. "I hope it works."

"If her family gets away we've lost that little girl forever," Rossi reminded them.

Inside the room, Hotch had lowered his voice again, but it was still full of disgust. "You're lying."

"Kathy," Emily began, but the woman cut her off.

"My name isn't Kathy!" she shouted, thrusting the photo of her ten-year-old self back at Emily.

"Yes it is," she insisted. "Your name is Kathy Gray. You're from Vienna, Virginia. Tell me where your husband and son are, so I can help you get your life back!"

Across from her, Hotch began pulling the crime scene photos from Kate's and Evelyn's files.

"He's going to show her those?" Jordan asked, horrified.

"Gotta shake her somehow," Derek remarked.

"But those are crime scene photos!"

 _And fairly horrific, as they go._

"It's cruel," Pearce agreed philosophically. "But less cruel than what she has become complicit in. Don't lose sight of the fact that she was a willing participant in what happened to Kate and Evelyn – and their parents."

"You wanna see what you did?" Hotch asked brutally, showing her the pictures.

"Wait, don't show her those!" Emily protested.

The assembled agents watched as Kathy visibly recoiled from the images.

"She killed them herself, she can see them again," Hotch reasoned, implacably. "Serial killers like to relive their crimes, did you know that?"

She visibly swallowed, though the stubborn determination was still there. She forced herself to look.

"This is Jeff Hale," Hotch told her viciously, pointing out the gash in the man's neck.

Kathy visibly steeled herself to look closer.

"He died from a strong, decisive cut," he continued relentlessly. "I think that was your husband."

 _It must be like being hit by a freight train,_ Jordan thought, _being interrogated by this team._

Emily watched her face carefully for something that would tell her when to close in.

Hotch put a new set of images down. "Nancy Hale. Her wound was more tentative. This was your son, right? I'm sure by the time he teaches his own son how to kill his own hand will be steady."

"Okay, stop," Emily told him, noticing Kathy's distress at the mention of her son.

"This is the Robelard family," Hotch continued, putting down the next photo, and the next.

"Kathy, you don't have to look at that," Emily insisted.

"You wanna see some more?"

The next photos were black and white – taken in the days when that was standard for crime scene photography.

Jordan saw the moment the woman who had been a frightened little girl recognised the faces of her own murdered parents.

 _God, I hate this job._

"I don't know what that is," Kathy protested, though you could see on her face that a part of her did.

"Then look closely!" Hotch shouted. He pushed her chair closer to the table, making her jump again, and leaned over the back of it, crowding her. "You don't recognise your own mother and father?"

She did. Now she did. Now she'd got a good look.

She began to cry.

"See?" Hotch asked, pointing at the wound to her mother's neck. "This is the tentative cut your future husband made, when he slit your mother's throat."

Kathy made an exhausted keening sort of noise that was more animal than human.

"He has her," Rossi observed coolly.

 _I don't want to be a part this_ , thought Jordan. _I don't want to be here._

"Where are your husband and son?" Hotch demanded.

"Kate Hale is only alive because of you, Kathy? Isn't that right?" Emily pressed, as if she was only just realising it. "Your – your husband wanted to kill her, and you didn't."

"No. No," she denied, trying to distance herself from the images and their implications.

"How does that make you feel?" Emily asked.

She was sobbing now and Jordan saw the two agents' eyes meet over Kathy Gray's head, obviously wondering how much more of this unpleasant business it would take until she was ready.

 _Not much_ , thought Jordan. _I'm emotionally exhausted and I'm out here – and I know Hotch is playing the part of someone far more volatile than he really is. Although presumably he is just as angry as the rest of us about what the people this team chases do. He just never shows it._

"How does it feel," Emily continued relentlessly, "knowing that he was ready to kill that innocent little girl. That he – he – would have been willing to kill you too? They murdered your family, Kathy, and they took you in but you were _never_ really one of them."

Kathy shook her head, hard. "No."

"You were just a – a _breeder_ ," Emily insisted.

"I won't betray my family."

"Your little boy is only ten. There is a chance he could get out of custody when he's eighteen," Emily told her. "But that is only if we can get to him."

"I love my family," Kathy protested, sobbing.

"She's ready," said Rossi, making his move.

"Then tell us where he is so we can all help them, together," Emily pleaded.

Rossi knocked on the door and handed Hotch a print out of a list of names, casting his cool gaze over the emotional wreck in the chair.

"Scott Woodland," Hotch read aloud. "Xander Blanchard."

"Oh, come on! Give her a second," Emily warned.

"Max Estep. Chip Jackson."

"I don't know who those people are," Kathy complained.

"It's a list of every known fence in Huntsville," Rossi explained.

"And you're going to tell us who your husband took the goods to," Hotch told her. "Coles Rizinsky."

"Come one, give her a minute!" Emily chimed in. "Give her a chance to do the right thing!"

But Hotch kept on talking over her. "Pete Scheurnet. Matt Thorn. Brent Woodhouse."

"Okay, I can't stop him," Emily told Kathy, who was sobbing now, almost helplessly.

"Kathy, this is it," Emily told her. "This is your last chance to make things right."

"Kevin Everson. Mike Fenner. Morris Collins."

"NO!" She leapt up and hit the table.

"That's the one," said Pearce.

"Reid," Morgan murmured. Together, the two of them disappeared out of the door.

"I won't tell you," Kathy protested.

"You just did," Hotch informed her.

She looked at him and realised it was true – that they had read it from her. Suddenly her calm and focus returned to her again. "The boy's not with him," she said, looking satisfied she hadn't given them that.

"Where are the children?" Emily asked gently.

Kathy considered it before looking directly at Hotch. "I'll only tell you if you let me see my son."

0o0

The SUV sped through the back streets towards Morris Collins' centre of operations. They pulled into the alley behind his pawn shop just as a man was leaving.

"That's gotta be him," said Morgan, as Spencer thought it.

He thrust their car across their end of the alley, closing it off, and the man who had to be their unsub immediately turned to flee in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for him, Sheriff Bates appeared in his patrol car at the far end of the alley and closed that off, too.

The man looked at both lines of cars, their front doors open as shields, bristling with cops and guns, and thought better of running.

"FBI! Hands in the air!" Morgan shouted.

Wisely, faced with two lines of guns, the man obeyed.

Morgan and Spencer moved in, their guns up.

The older agent took point, yelling, "Get on your knees! Down on the ground! Now!"

He cuffed him while Spencer and the Sheriff covered him.

"You know, we got a long list of girls to go through with you," Morgan told him.

The man scoffed. "In history, warriors invaded towns, killed the men, women and boys, but kept the girls for themselves." He raised his voice, puffing out his chest, as Morgan hauled him to his feet. "You exist because your ancestors did what was needed for you to survive!"

"That doesn't mean we have to make the same choices," Spencer said, putting his gun away.

"Get him outta here," said Morgan, handing him over to Bates.

"You'll never find my boy!" he yelled as they led him away.

"We already have," Spencer called, knowing what it would do to him.

The unsub turned and stared at him, then all the fight went out of his body.

Spencer walked back to the SUV, satisfied. Sometimes he wondered whether Morgan and Pearce were bad influences on him.

0o0

Aaron ended the call from Reid telling him that the driving force behind this murderous family had been apprehended and was being brought in, looking up as the door of the department swung open. The deputy who had just come in stepped aside, revealing their third and final unsub – a worried ten year old boy, Rossi's hand on one shoulder, guiding him through the Sheriff's Office.

Behind him – and Aaron allowed himself to relax a little – Pearce was carrying little Evelyn Robelard inside, the girl's arms wrapped tightly around his young agent's neck. He watched as she carried her towards the staff room, where the family liaison Jordan had called was waiting for her until her remaining family could be contacted and summoned.

They boy looked up at Aaron as he passed him, anxious but insolent, and he saw in the child – without any shred of doubt – the eyes of a killer.

0o0

Emily glanced around as the boy came in, Rossi just behind him. "Kathy."

The woman ran to the wire cage of the lock-up she was in and put her fingers through to meet his. It was plain to see how relieved she was to be able to see him one last time.

"It's just you, now," she said tearfully. "You've got to be strong."

The child nodded, clearly desperate to do the right thing as far as his parents are concerned, if not the rest of society.

Kathy half-glanced at Rossi, who was behind him, aware of their audience.

 _She's planning something_ , Emily thought suddenly. _But what?_

"I love you, puiule," she said stroking his hair through the grille.

There was a moment where her body language changed – Emily could see it in the boy's face, too, a readiness for action. She started to move forward, but Kathy spoke a few hurried sentences in Romanian before she could put a stop to it, low and urgent.

"No, Kathy," said Emily, taking her arm, but the damage was already done.

"What did you tell him?" Rossi demanded.

"Okay, Kathy. No," said Emily, pulling her away from the partition.

Outside the lock-up, Rossi opened the door to the monitoring room, where Sheriff Bates was watching the encounter. "Sheriff, get that videotape. We need to get it to a translator."

"You got it."

0o0

Aaron peered at the board, wondering what they could have missed. Rossi appeared from the back of the building, where they were holding Kathy and her son. Her husband and abductor had been taken to a different station to be processed, to avoid him influencing her or her son.

"Translation should be here in a few minutes," said Dave.

"Good."

"Little girl's aunt and uncle are on their way here from Birmingham," Todd informed them, joining the two men. "They'll be here in a few hours."

Aaron nodded, relieved they could hand her over to people she knew and trusted.

"And I just spoke to JJ," Todd added. "She'll be back at her desk by the time we get back to Quantico."

Aaron felt his eyebrows twitch upwards. "She has three more weeks of maternity leave left."

"I know," said Todd, with a grin. "I think she's a little stir crazy at home. She got Henry into a good nursery and it's really working out. She's dying to get back – and honestly, I'm dying to get back to counter-terrorism," she added, not without amusement. "It's where I'm needed."

"They're lucky to have you," said Dave, shaking her hand, as Aaron wondered if he could have been easier on her to make her less eager to leave.

Todd interrupted his thoughts as Rossi disappeared back into the holding cells. "May I say something?" she asked.

"Sure," said Aaron, wondering what she might feel the need to say, now she knew she would be leaving early.

"This team is like a family," she told him. "And families take on the traits of their leaders." She frowned, and he read something of her continued frustration with and anxiety for her temporary teammates in her expression. "You don't show much emotion."

"Meaning what?" he asked, perplexed.

 _I'm not damaging my team, am I?_

Perhaps he had been keeping things closer to his chest since his marriage broke down, but he had always been reserved. Hadn't he?

"I've sat at JJ's desk and I've looked at some of the worst things I've ever seen just trying to do half her job," Todd said. "I hope you don't take her for granted."

"I don't," he replied.

 _Of course I don't. none of us do. None of us take anyone else on the team for granted – we've seen how easy it is to have the people we care about ripped away from us. And we understand the toll of this work._

 _And you never really did, did you?_ he realised.

They nodded at one another, understanding that this will be all that is said until they land back home and everyone says goodbye. As one, they made the short walk to join Dave and Prentiss outside the interrogation room.

"We got the translation," said Dave, an unusually bleak expression on his face.

Aaron stared at him for a moment. "What does it say?"

"'Don't tell them about your brothers'."

0o0

 _The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other._

 _Mario Puzo_

0o0

"I'm sorry I wasn't more polite with them," said Grace.

They were in a bar in DC, outside their usual stomping ground. The place was warm and comfortable, and had the right sort of non-confrontational atmosphere that they needed to have this conversation.

"Nah," said Troy, a half-grin on his face. "Way I see it, you were chasin' a serial killer and my brother was being the pushy asshole I know and love. You got nothin' to be sorry for."

"Still, I don't like to make things awkward for you."

"You couldn' if you tried."

Grace smiled and began peeling the label off her beer bottle with her nail.

"They – uh…" He looked away for a moment and then back towards her. "They want me to settle down and get married."

She nodded. Families did. Particularly close ones, like his.

"And what do you want?" she asked.

"I guess I want that one day," he said. "But on my own terms – not because my mom is worried I'm getting' too old."

They both chuckled. He took another sip of his drink.

"What do you want?" he asked, eventually, looking at her from the corner of his eye.

"Another beer," she replied, and signalled to the barman while Troy laughed. "I don't know. I don't know that I'm cut out for the long haul thing," she reflected.

 _I'm bad news, but you don't need to know that. You have the sense to get out while the going's still good._

"I hope you get to be, one day," he said, tipping his bottle towards her.

She gave him a half-smile. He was such a generous soul.

"Maybe."

"I – uh – I hope this means you won't take Lily elsewhere," he remarked, mischief in his green eyes. "I'll miss her."

"You after joint custody, that sort of thing?" she joked and he laughed.

"That sort of thing."

They drank in companionable silence for a while, idly fiddling with the bar mats and half-listening to the music playing on the jukebox.

"So, what's next for Troy Jackson?" she asked, slowly spinning her bottle on the edge of its base, swirling the rest of the contents.

He shrugged. "Gotta train up Mickey a bit more. He'll make a half-decent mechanic in a couple of years. Might pull out those hideous old kitchen cupboards in my apartment and make up somethin' less 1960s."

"Give me a call," Grace offered. "I'll give you a hand."

"I just might take you up on that," he said, with a grin. "How about you?"

"Oh. Well, the garden's coming on, that'll need some attention when it starts getting warmer." She shrugged too, following his example. "More corpses, predominantly, I should think."

"Lovely."

"Hey, it's a living."

"Rather you than me," he said, quite honestly. "I don't know how you do it."

Grace thought about it for a moment. "I have hope that the good days might outweigh the bad days, in the end," she said. "I mean it's rough, but yesterday I got to rescue a terrified little girl and take her home to her aunt and uncle. Reminded me that even if this job kills me in the end, it's going to be worth it."

"Agent Pearce, you might very well be my hero," he told her, and she laughed.

"You've definitely had enough beer then."

He agreed and they both picked up their coats.

"So," she said, on the pavement outside the bar.

"So…" The corner of his mouth quirked upwards. "I'm gonna miss you."

"I'll miss you too," she replied, an answering smile on her lips.

The kiss was bittersweet, but then goodbye kisses always were.

"See you around, Agent Pearce," he said.

"Until next time."

They turned and walked away, one towards the taxi rank, and one towards the AMTRAK, without undue sorrow or regret.


	5. Cold Comfort

**Essential listening: Natural Blues, by Moby**

0o0

"This is a much better way of spending Valentine's day than out in a crowded bar being ogled by complete strangers," Emily remarked happily. "And _so_ much better than pretending we're not privately slightly upset at being alone on the romantics' night of the year."

"Definitely," Grace agreed, snuggling down inside the ridiculously fluffy cowled hoodie she had found in the January sales. Far too impractical to wear out of the house, but ideal for lozzocking around on a friend's sofa, avoiding doing anything useful. "Though honestly I don't mind too much."

"You broke up two weeks ago," Emily pointed out gently. "You're allowed to be sad about it."

Grace laughed. "Well, I do miss him," she admitted. "But I think we both knew from the start that neither of us was looking for anything long-term."

"Best way," Emily reflected, reaching for her glass. "It's a stupid, over-sentimentalised holiday anyway."

Grace smiled to herself inside her hoodie. Apparently Emily was feeling a little sorry for herself, having had little luck in the love department of late.

Valentine's day had fallen on a Saturday this year, and to prevent any of their team-mates trying to lure them out to a bar, the two of them had decided to have what Grace couldn't help thinking of as a Proper Sleepover, complete with junk food, alcohol in silly colours, and romantic comedy movies. There were no shortage of the latter on Emily's cable channels, but they had opted for slightly less saccharine options – old favourites from their miss-spent university years.

They were both curled up on Emily's reclining sofa, pyjamas already on, even though it was only seven o'clock, a large pepperoni pizza between them, a stack of strawberry twists apiece and a big bowl of homemade popcorn. Grace had brought a box of assorted frozen cocktail pouches for the freezer and periodically one or the other of them would fetch a couple, swearing at how cold they made their fingers while they tried to get them into the glass.

There was also a bowl of frickles, but Grace was leaving them well alone.

"Do you know the origins of Valentine's?" Grace asked, as the credits of _Legally Blonde_ scrolled up the screen.

"No, actually. I suspect someone called Valentine was probably beheaded for standing up to a local pagan lord somewhere in Europe," said Emily, chewing a strawberry twist.

"Burned alive, actually."

"You always have the _best_ stories."

"I like to think so. The origins go further back, though. It was a fertility festival," said Grace, swiping her third slice of pizza. "Fire, lycanthropy and outdoor sex were the predominant themes."

Emily snorted. "Now, that's the kind of tradition I could get behind. Except the burning alive part."

It was Grace's turn to change the DVD, so she slid out of the cocoon of blankets she had made herself and went to put in _Van Wilder, Party Liaison_. Emily's mobile went off before she got back to her seat.

"If that's a case, I'm going to work wearing these," she warned, indicating her owl pyjamas.

Emily laughed. "Just Morgan again. I think his usual round of 'honies' turned him down, so he's –" She broke off, giggling. "He says he's cruising the clubs with Reid as a wing-man."

Grace, who had just taken a sip of cocktail, had a hard time not spitting it out again.

"Oh, poor Reid!" She laughed helplessly for nearly a full minute. "Oh, I hope Morgan lets him off the hook – he hates clubbing _so_ much."

"Hah! Not likely, his only other option was Rossi."

Grace snorted. "He'd probably put Morgan in the shade."

With Garcia off on a romantic weekend with Kevin, JJ and Will out on a date while JJ's mother watched Henry, Hotch working around the clock so he didn't have to think about it and the girls hiding out at Emily's, Morgan hadn't had many options.

She slipped her phone out of her pyjama pocket while Emily was in the bathroom and texted Reid.

 _Text 911 if you need to escape._

This was greeted by a very grumpy looking emoji that made her laugh out loud.

 _No chance of that, Morgan's 'Workin' the club'._

 _And you're not?_

Another blank expression.

 _I would honestly rather be watching terrible chick flicks with you and Prentiss. Or interviewing a spree killer. Or drinking tomato juice._

Grace snorted. The extent to which Spencer Reid hated tomato juice bordered on phobia.

 _I'm sure Emily wouldn't mind you crashing,_ she texted back, though she was rather hoping he wouldn't take her up on that.

She was enjoying being unapologetically girly.

 _Morgan would kill me_ …

Grace nodded, and left it there, ignoring the ellipsis that suggested he was open to persuasion. They all had their crosses to bear, after all.

"All good?" Emily asked, when she came back in.

Grace looked at her for a moment, wondering whether she somehow knew who she had been texting. She slid her phone back into her pocket, wondering why it felt like she was a teenager who had narrowly escaped being caught doing something mildly inadvisable by her big sister.

"Yep. Frickle?"

0o0

It was the start of another long week at the Behavioural Analysis Unit, and while the assorted members of the team were ready for action, you couldn't really describe them as being 'raring to go'. This morning they were clustered around the staff kitchenette at the back of the bullpen; Garcia was sitting at the table, picking at a breakfast muffin while Kevin read the newspaper over her shoulder. Morgan, Emily and Grace were making drinks, aware that it would not be long before the working day sucked them back in.

The subject of the morning was horoscopes, and Grace was doing her best not to join in.

"'Current influences should turn this day into one with plenty of potential, but avoid the trap of trying too hard'," said Garcia, reading Kevin's horoscope aloud. "'Know your strengths. Rely on them. Confidence – real or pretend – is your magic ingredient'."

Grace stirred her tea (Earl Grey, this morning), amused.

"Confidence – yes, I like that," said Kevin, cheerfully.

Morgan went to perch on the table. "Come on guys, you don't actually believe there's anything to that stuff, do you?"

"Oh hey, you'd be surprised," Kevin protested, but Emily turned, coffee in hand, and scoffed.

"It's just gibberish."

Morgan raised a hand to her in open agreement. "Thank you."

"And is that the opinion upheld by our resident occult expert?" Garcia asked.

Grace, who had been staying diplomatically quiet, turned to find her friends peering inquisitively in her direction. She shrugged. "Oh, I think it's theoretically possible for certain individuals to predict future events – under the right conditions," she conceded, as both Morgan and Emily rolled their eyes. "But certainly not consistently enough for the weekly press."

"But if it's theoretically possible?" Kevin asks, pointing at the horoscope. "Why not trust it?"

She smiled into her tea, the steam of it curling around her face. "I just struggle to believe that the entire population of the Earth can be divided and categorised into twelve neat sections based on birth date. Like Yoda says, 'always in motion is the future'. Difficult to glimpse."

"Oh, you are just jealous because you don't have the magic ingredient," Garcia told them.

"I have the magic ingredient," said Emily. "It's called 'Splenda'."

Even Kevin chuckled.

"Alright sceptic," he challenged. "What's your sign?"

"Uh oh," said Morgan, enjoying the banter.

"No," said Emily, simply.

"'No' – is that in April?" Garcia quipped. She glanced up at Reid, who had just come in, clutching a take-out coffee. "Reid," she said plaintively. "We need a D-O-B on Prentiss."

As usual, he answered without thinking – or questioning Garcia's motives. "Uh, 7.12 a.m., October twelve, nineteen sev-"

"Hey!" Emily interrupted, irritably waving her spoon at him.

He stopped speaking, giving her a 'what did I do?' kind of look, visibly chastened.

"Mm, Libra. I shoulda known," mused Garcia, as she and Kevin pored over the horoscope page. "'A romantic opportunity may experience a slight hitch thanks to the pesky lunar influence, which could have you dipping into a rather chilly mood'."

Emily winced, but continued to listen, humouring her friends.

"'If being demonstrative and warm is difficult, then neutralise this temporary cold front with a simple but affectionate gesture'," Garcia finished cheerfully.

"I have a simple gesture," Emily told them, giving them the finger.

They all laughed.

"Hey, you guys ready to gather?" JJ asked appearing out of nowhere.

Grace grinned. Their media liaison really was a sight for sore eyes. "There's a warmer front rolling in already," Grace teased and Emily stuck her tongue out at her.

"Look at you miss _thang_ ," Morgan said, impressed. "First day back and you're all business." He gave her a mock salute.

"Well," JJ admitted, amused. "It's either dive right in, or confront my separation anxiety."

Grace chuckled.

"It's tough being away from him, huh?" Garcia asked.

"Yeah," she replied, with a sardonic smile.

Garcia noticed a ring on her friend's finger and lifted her hand to get a closer look, catching the others' attention.

"Oh, hey, that's new isn't it?" Emily asked, pleased to be out of the spotlight again.

"Yeah, citrine." JJ smiled. "It's – uh – Henry's birthstone. Uh, Will and I both got one."

"Aww that's sweet," Garcia purred in approval.

"Good birthstone," Grace reflected, nodding in agreement.

All at once, she could feel Reid and Morgan rolling their eyes at one another, even though Reid was behind her.

"What's it mean?" Garcia asked, interested.

JJ looked at her, too, obviously intrigued.

"It's an energetic crystal," Grace told them. "A cheerful, joyful stone. Optimism, positivity, that sort of thing."

She shared a smile with JJ as Reid muttered something disparaging into his tea – but not loud enough for JJ to hear, because – well, it was JJ. Grace ignored him.

"What, you believe in birthstones, but horoscopes are old hat?" Kevin complained.

She shrugged. "I also believe in the curative properties of tea, so…"

Morgan snickered, but JJ spotted the horoscope page on the table. "You done with this?"

"Yeah," said Garcia.

"Okay."

She took the paper with her as she headed towards the situation room.

"What's your birthstone?" Garcia asked Grace, as Reid's grumblings about horoscopes and birthstones went up a notch, now he knew he wouldn't hurt his friend's feelings.

"Snowflake obsidian," She grinned. "I like to think it means I'm dark and mysterious."

Behind her, Reid snorted into his coffee cup and turned away. Emily and Morgan shook their heads at the whole lot of them and headed for the debrief. Grace followed them, still amused, Reid only a few paces behind.

Rossi and Hotch were already there, and JJ was setting up the screen. Once they were all settled, she brought up the case file.

"There's been a string of abductions in Olympia, Washington, going back months," JJ told them, as a series of smiling women appeared on the screen. "Four women in all. Blonde, blue eyed, early twenties. Uh, this morning they found one."

"When were they taken?" Hotch asked, as photographs of the burial site began to come up.

"Nine months ago," JJ responded.

Emily frowned. "So she was the first?"

"Yeah."

Rossi leaned forwards, peering at the screen. "Looks almost mummified," he observed.

"Uh, not exactly," said JJ.

"Frozen?" Morgan asked.

"Embalmed," said Grace, without needing to check the notes. She'd seen it before. "Looks like a professional job, too."

"Yeah," said JJ, giving her the 'you're weird and I forgot about it' look that Grace had long since grown used to on the force.

"That's… different," Emily remarked.

"Yeah," said JJ. "So the time of death is a bit of a question mark right now."

"Where did they find her?" Rossi asked.

"In a state park, just east of Olympia. Seasonal hiking area," the media liaison told them. "The body was jarred loose during a mudslide. That, plus the unusual decomp', makes it difficult to know how long she was there."

"It says here the victims were abducted about three months apart," Reid noted, reading his file. "If he's rotating his victims out –"

"There are going to be more bodies out there," Hotch finished, looking pensive.

0o0

… _and so all the night tide, I lie down by the side, of my darling, my darling, my life, my bride. In the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea._

 _Edgar Allan Poe_

0o0

They had moved their conversation to the jet, wanting to get a jump on this thing before their unsub could strike again – particularly since they had no real idea about how his cycle functioned yet, other than there being one.

JJ had taken a seat a little apart from the others. It felt very strange, being back after months of nothing more sinister than mother-and-baby club meetings and standing in line in coffee shops with Will, praying that their son might fall asleep soon and they would have a little peace. The BAU was an entirely different pace of life – and not just that, a different world. And a darker one.

She felt curiously distant from it all today. Like an outsider.

"So, if I wanted to embalm a body, what's the process?" Emily asked, sitting at the table beside Grace.

Morgan quirked an eyebrow. "Start with some nose plugs."

She watched Emily pull a face at him.

"Blood is drained through the jugular vein and replaced with embalming fluid through one of the two major arteries," said Spence, as if someone had merely asked him how coffee was prepared. "It usually takes a few hours."

Rossi nodded. "Then you'd need special equipment, training."

"A knowledge of the human vascular system would also be a plus," Reid added.

"A doctor maybe?" JJ suggested.

"Nurse, technician," Hotch continued. "Someone with a background in mortuary sciences."

"Now there's a major they didn't offer at my school," Morgan remarked.

"Yeah, it's not a common course," Grace piped up, somewhere beyond Emily. JJ couldn't see her from where she was sitting. "And undertakers are a pretty closed community in some ways."

"How so?" JJ asked.

"Well, in the UK the profession tends to pass down through the generations of the same family," she replied, her blonde curls briefly appearing above the back of the seat. "I don't know if that's the same here."

Morgan nodded.

"The whole thing just seems weird to me," said Emily, with a grimace. "Embalming, I mean."

"Some people just like to look good for their funeral," Morgan told her.

"But it's not them," she protested. "It's just a shell. Polished and painted." She grimaced again. "I just wanna be cremated."

"There's a long archaeological tradition of preservation," Grace pointed out. "Mostly associated with cultures who had a strong belief in a physical afterlife, like the ancient Egyptians."

"The question is why somebody would want to embalm the body of someone they've just murdered," Hotch reminded them.

"He wants to hold onto them," Rossi suggested. "It's a possession issue."

"This way they can never leave," Morgan proposed. "Maybe fear of abandonment speaks to his history."

"Mm, but eventually even an embalmed body will decay, and he finds himself in need of new victims," Spencer reflected.

It was JJ's turn to grimace.

 _Why did I ever miss this?_ she asked herself.

"That explains the abduction cycle," Hotch mused. "A new victim every three months."

"Which means two of the remaining three women are already dead," Rossi said heavily.

JJ turned to him. "And the third?"

"Brooke Lombardini," Hotch told them, putting her picture on the table. "Abducted four days ago, after finishing her shift at a restaurant. We know the odds," he added, sadly.

"Ninety percent of abduction victims are killed within the first twenty-four hours," Reid recited.

"Let's hope Brooke is in the 'lucky' ten percent," said Rossi.

The agents nodded, dispersing back to their seats. JJ stayed where she was, reflecting that full-time motherhood might not have been such a bad deal after all. She saw Morgan move his leg and nudge one of the others in the knee.

"What?" Grace asked, and JJ guessed she had been his intended target.

"You're frownin' down at that thing like it badmouthed your momma," he pointed out. "Whaddyou got?"

JJ could hear the uncomfortable twist to her friend's facial expression in her voice as she spoke. "Just thinking about embalming."

Emily shook her head. "Urgh, I'm trying not to."

"When the anatomists were building their teaching collections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they would preserve bodies in wax or mercury," Grace said thoughtfully. "Some of them tried to find people with unusual diseases or characteristics. Others wanted the most athletic, aesthetically pleasing specimens they could find. They thought they were preserving and enhancing examples of human perfection."

She stopped, probably realising how much she sounded like Reid. JJ caught Morgan's eye over Emily's shoulder and hid a smile.

"Of course," she said, pedalling backwards a pace. "The majority of those bodies weren't abducted – in the strictest sense."

"No, most of them were dug up," Emily said.

"Some of them were murdered," Spence mused. JJ could just make out the frown on his face around the side of the seat. "I think I see where you're going with this."

"The fresher the corpse, the better the preservation," said Grace. "The more fanatical anatomists began to see their victims as casualties in the quest for knowledge, and paid the body snatchers accordingly higher prices for breathing 'specimens'." She paused before saying the thing she had obviously been avoiding bringing up. "Some of them were even embalmed alive."

"Oh God, that's another entry for my list of nightmares, right there," Emily complained.

"Sorry," Grace apologised. "I just… I think I read somewhere about a case in Cuba a few years ago where someone was doing that. I dunno. It's just in my head."

"You're welcome to ask Garcia to check it out," Morgan offered, and the four agents laughed it off.

JJ turned away, remembering when this kind of back and forth about the darkest horrors of the world was routine. It didn't feel like it anymore.

 _Are we callous, to speak of death and murder like this,_ she wondered. _Or is this the only way mostly sane humans get through subject matter that would make most people vomit?_

She thought of her baby boy, tucked safe and warm in his bright cot, dreaming the day away.

 _I hope I made the right decision, coming back to this._


	6. Reflections of Madness

**Essential listening: Premonition, by John Fogerty**

0o0

"Hiker found her foot protruding from the soil right up here," said Detective Jimmy Duran, leading them through the tremendously muddy burial site.

He had been waiting for them at the scene, happy to give them a tour if it meant they were closer to solving the case that was slowly taking over his and his partner's every waking moment.

Spencer focussed on trying not to slide around in the mud too much. The crime scene was a _mess_. Irritatingly, Pearce had thought to bring a spare pair of sturdy boots and had dug these out of her case as soon as Hotch had divided the team up. Neither he nor Morgan had thought to do the same.

She had given them both looks of tolerant exasperation and muttered about 'city boys' under her breath while lacing her boots up, and it had annoyed Spencer quite a bit. He hadn't joined the FBI to wade around in ankle-deep mud, after all.

As soon as they had got to the crime scene, however, he had privately conceded that Pearce had been one-hundred percent correct in her choice of footwear. He made a mental note to go out and buy a pair of hiking boots as soon as they were back in Virginia, taking care not to step on anything that might be evidence.

How anyone could tell in conditions like this, he had no idea. He did not envy the forensic technicians one jot. He grimaced as the mud began to seep into his socks and up the legs of his trousers.

The only consolation he could see was that Morgan was in just as much discomfort as him. He glanced in Spencer's direction, a warning, perhaps, to remain professional despite the squelching sounds their shoes were making.

"Whole side of the hill slid down from up there," said the detective, gesturing uphill.

"So you're focussing the search in this area here?" Morgan asked him.

"Yeah, but… if he dumped other bodies here he's got over eight-hundred acres to work with," Duran told them, sounding a little hopeless.

"Oh, I think they're fairly nearby," Pearce said, squinting up the hill in a manner that gave Spencer immediate pause.

The others didn't seem to have noticed, however.

"Keep your men near the fire road, detective," he advised, his eyes lingering on Pearce's face. "One man dragging a body through the woods…"

"Hundred and ten pounds of dead weight," Morgan continued where Spencer left off. "He's not gonna get far from the path."

 _What is she seeing?_ Spencer wondered.

All at once, Pearce seemed to notice him looking; her eyes met his for a moment before she glanced quickly at the crest of the hill, telling him where to start. He followed her gaze, but there was nothing there save forensic technicians and the shifting, dripping trees. At least, nothing _he_ could see.

Not for the first time, he wondered whether when he'd met Grace Pearce several years before he hadn't gone completely mad and simply failed to notice.

 _It would explain a lot of things._

"It's why a lot of killers dismember their victims," he said aloud. "They're easier to dispose of that way."

"You think it says somethin' about the profile that he didn't chop her up?" Duran asked.

"Possibly, yeah," Spencer agreed.

He watched as Morgan dropped into a crouch beside a fern that had just escaped being smothered or uprooted by the mudslide. He pulled something out of the mud: a gold chain with a pendant. A crucifix.

"What is it?" the detective asked.

"A cross," Pearce said, peering over Morgan's shoulder. "If he chose to bury that with her, she or the burial must have specific meaning for him."

"Uh, detective?"

They all looked up as an officer further up the hill called down to Duran.

"We got – we got somethin' up here."

Reading the presence of another body from the young cop's hesitance, the detective and the three agents slipped and slid up the hill, using the trees to keep something resembling purchase on the shifting mud. A woman's face – barely decomposed – was just visible amongst the leaf litter, her hands crossed neatly over her chest.

 _Might as well test the theory_ , he thought, gently teasing the fabric around her hands, to reveal a gold chain.

"The answer to your question, detective, is yes," he said, carefully extracting a second gold cross pendant from the woman's clasped fingers. "This killer can't dismember these women. He cares for them."

He met Morgan's eyes, then looked at Pearce as the detective moved away to summon the coroner. She was still gazing at something above him, rather than down at the body.

 _Definitely lost my mind_ , he thought. _She's standing there, staring at ghosts only she can see, and I completely believe they're there._

He sighed and tried to stand up, which was about the point when one foot slipped down the hill in an apparent attempt to leave the other behind.

"Whoa! Whoa!" he exclaimed, convinced he was going to fall flat on his face.

Fortunately, however, his friends interceded.

"Whoa there," Morgan said as he and Pearce – jolted out of staring whatever was on the hill – caught him under the shoulders. Morgan held onto him just long enough to keep him upright, then went after the detective. Pearce, on the other hand, kept a hold of him until he felt more stable.

"Steady," she said, and for a moment Spencer was entirely lost in the way she smelled. Bergamot and rose, and – yes – that strawberry stuff she put in her hair, all picked out by the fresh mud-and-pine scent of the forest.

He swallowed, forcing himself to focus instead on the departing notes of Morgan's aftershave and the faint tang of decomposition that was beginning to creep out of the grave they had just opened.

"Alright?" she asked, helping push him back more firmly on his feet.

"I – I think so," he managed, hoping he sounded more winded from the slip than from her proximity.

 _God I hate you_ , he thought irritably, and then offered her his hand as she picked her own way back down the hill. Her fingers were cold, even through the latex gloves they were both wearing.

With that and the mud it took him back to peaceful days in the previous winter, complaining to her about how often she put him to work in her garden, and pretending he didn't enjoy just being around her, even if it meant wielding a spade on frosty days.

Firmly reminding himself how his stomach had turned over when he'd spotted her kissing her trendy, irritatingly wholesome, far-too-handsome boyfriend in January, he let go of her hand.

"Urgh, all this mud is a forensic nightmare," Pearce remarked, entirely oblivious to his dip in mood. "Come on, let's get out of here before we make it any worse."

With some relief he followed her out of the swamp and up towards the fire access road, wondering whether Garcia's horoscope page had said anything about Scorpios going totally insane in this phase of Saturn's ascension, or whatever it currently was. He couldn't even be bothered to work out which it should be, though it was a fairly easy calculation.

And that annoyed him even more.

He was still mentally grumbling to himself when he found himself on mercifully firmer ground.

"You think they'll find the third up there?" Morgan asked as they caught up to him at the SUV they arrived in.

"Oh yeah," said Pearce, with a certainty that appeared to be lost on Morgan. She looked back over her shoulder. "They're all right there."

She met Spencer's gaze while Morgan made a start on trying to clean off his shoes.

He turned away, pulling off his gloves.

 _First sign of madness_ , he thought. _Knowing something is completely crazy and not caring._

0o0

"Brooke worked the closing shift the night she disappeared," Detective Ron Fullwood told them.

He was escorting Aaron and Prentiss to the abduction site, taking them through the evidence they had so far. It was a reasonably upmarket area. Well-travelled, but probably quiet at night – which would have worked to the unsub's advantage.

"She woulda walked this way to her car," said Fullwood, pointing to a turn in the pavement that led between several buildings.

Aaron nodded. "Upscale restaurant?" he asked, surmising from the presentation of the general area.

"Well, let's just say I don't go – unless it's on someone else's dime," Fullwood agreed.

"What are you thinking?" Prentiss asked.

"These women were taken as they left work," he said. "High-end spa, jewellery store, nice restaurant…"

"If he patronises these businesses then he's got money," Prentiss finished, completing the mental equation.

"It narrows the profile a little," Aaron offered, and the detective nodded.

He would probably take everything he could get, right now.

The three of them turned into the parking lot.

"Cook said that he left just a few minutes after Brooke," Fullwood reported. "Saw her car there, driver's side door open."

"He was quick. Surprised her," Aaron surmised. "11 p.m.. It was dark, he had cover – she probably never saw him coming."

"So, it says in here they recovered her necklace," Prentiss asked, looking through the file as they walked. "Amethyst, broken chain?"

"Right here," said Fullwood, pointing to a large puddle at the centre of the parking lot. "Right next to the car."

"Did you process the necklace?" Aaron asked.

The detective nodded. "We couldn't get anything off'f it. Just some hair in the clasp. Hers."

Aaron nodded. It figured.

 _Still, it's worth exploring, just in case._

"I'd like to take a look at it," he said.

All at once there was something furtive about Detective Fullwood's behaviour. He looked away for a moment. "Yeah, well I gave it back to her mother," he admitted, his eyes flashing with a tired kind of embarrassed defiance.

 _Were they having an affair?_ Aaron wondered; he glanced at Prentiss, who looked surprised.

"Isn't it a little premature to be returning evidence to the family?" Aaron asked.

"There were special circumstances," Fullwood told them uncomfortably, as if he had been hoping he wouldn't have to explain this – at least to the FBI. "She hired someone. Guy by the name of – um – Stanley Usher. He helped find a kid in Portland a couple years ago."

"Private investigator?" Prentiss guessed.

"A psychic," Fullwood admitted.

 _Ah,_ thought Aaron, understanding his reticence.

Suddenly he felt oddly empathetic towards the detective. Perhaps he could ask him how he intended to report the psychic's evidence – compare notes.

 _No wonder he's uncomfortable_ , he thought. _Who would want to admit they were tapping into the paranormal to help solve a case?_

He quirked a corner of his mouth wryly.

Prentiss's eyebrows had disappeared behind her fringe. "Um – uh –" she spluttered, looking to Aaron for guidance and obviously trying to phrase her next question in a non-combative way. "What does this have to do with the necklace?"

"Apparently he can – read personal things," Fullwood responded, as if he didn't entirely believe it himself. "Their aura. I – I don't know."

Aaron watched both his agent's disbelief and the detective's hesitance, trying not to break into a smile. It was almost pleasant to see someone else wrestling with this kind of thing for a change. "So what did he tell her?" he asked.

Fullwood met his gaze. "That Brooke's alive."

"Well, of course he did," Prentiss muttered as they follow the detective back to the car. "He wants to keep her on the hook or he loses his pay check."

Aaron didn't say anything. He was thinking about the time a year or so before when he had asked the newest member of his team to 'read' someone else's necklace.

"What if he's telling them the truth?" he murmured.

"Oh, come on Hotch, it's totally bogus," Prentiss scoffed, dismissively.

He let it go, reflecting that it was hard, sometimes, to tell what was real and what was not. A couple of years ago he would have dismissed the psychic out of hand as an obvious charlatan… Perhaps this Stanley Usher was on the level; perhaps he was just taking Brooke's mother for an expensive ride.

 _At least now I know a way we can find out._

0o0

"I need to talk to you," said Hotch in a low voice.

Grace looked up, surprised. She had been expecting a team huddle, not a one-on-one. "About the burial site?"

"No," he said, and then did a sort of little double-take, narrowing his eyes. "Unless there's anything I need to know?"

"Nothing we didn't expect," she told him, knowing he could infer anything he needed from that. "What, then?"

He nodded towards the group of agents clustered around the desks, where Prentiss was grousing about the inclusion of a psychic.

"Ah…"

"Yeah," said her boss. "Detective Fullwood gave her Brooke's necklace to have him read its 'aura'."

Grace raised her eyebrow at his turn of phrase. It was bordering on the sarcastic, but she suspected he was just baiting her. She had lent him the appropriate books on the subject, after all, and aura wasn't quite the right word. "What an unusually forward thinking member of the law enforcement community," she said politely, and his expression shifted towards one of tolerant warning.

 _Tread carefully here_ , it seemed to say. _Including a psychic is one thing – admitting a member of the team is a witch is another._

She nodded, almost imperceptibly. It was unlikely there would ever be a place for someone like her in the FBI – openly, at the very least.

"There are any number of charlatans waiting to prey on the grieving and the desperate," she reflected aloud.

"And we need to know if he's the real deal," Hotch said, which she supposed was agreement. "Would you be able to tell?"

She nodded immediately, aware of her own capabilities. "In ten seconds flat."

"Good. I want you to go out to the house with Rossi and JJ and find out whether…" He trailed off, uncertain how to proceed.

"Whether he's on the level, or inserting himself into the investigation for financial gain or other disgusting reasons," she finished, taking his meaning. "Got you."

"Try to get a read off that necklace, too. I want to know what you make of it."

"You got it. Though," she warned him, "as I said last time, if I get a good read from it its bad news for Brooke."

"Do what you can," he said, and headed over to the kitchen area to refuel.

Grace joined the others, running through the possibilities in her mind.

 _It's an amethyst pendant_ , she recalled. _That could help. Not a bad amplifier, as crystals go…_

Morgan was giving Rossi a strange look when she arrived. "You work with psychics before?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Rossi, making his low opinion of them clear. "Not by choice."

 _I'll be keeping my head down, then_ , she noted. _Clashing over something this silly won't help matters, and as far as we know, Brooke Lombardini could very well be alive._

"You know, there are cases where people believe they've helped," said JJ quietly, and Grace guessed that this was something she needed to believe in.

Her eyes were drawn to her friend's new citrine ring, which JJ was playing with.

 _Must be weird as hell being back in the middle of all this_ , she thought, with a measure of sympathy.

"When people are vulnerable, they believe a lotta things," said Rossi, moving off.

 _He doesn't want to start anything either. Good. I shouldn't say anything – at least, nothing too confrontational. I am not going to lose this team the same way._

"We don't all have to believe the same things," she said quietly, mostly for JJ's benefit. "Doesn't make everyone else wrong."

"Yeah?" said Morgan, curious.

"You didn't believe in God when we met," she reminded him. "Now you do. Hasn't changed you as a person."

"And what do you believe in, Little Miss Occult?" Morgan asked, amused. He was speaking gently, like she was, apparently aware of the delicate line they were stepping along. "Where do you think people go when they die?"

"I think…" The corner of her mouth twitched up. "I think not all of us do."

Morgan chuckled and shook his head, but it earned her a small smile from JJ, and that was good enough.


	7. Abbeys in the Rain

**Posting early this week since I'm away in the land of my heathen ancestors on Friday. I should probably also flag up – for those of you reading this who haven't watched the show – that this is a particularly grim one, even by BAU standards.**

 **That's right – they're bringing out the necrophilia gong. Lovely. Just what you need.**

 **Love you all, Pxx**

 **0o0**

 **Essential listening: Love + Pain, by Clor**

 **0o0**

Sandra Lombardini had welcomed the arrival of three FBI agents to her home with a kind of grim determination; pleased to have more hands on the case if it brought her daughter home safely. Or at least, improved the chances of that. Still, she was already frustrated with them. Grace didn't blame her, even knowing people had your missing family member's best interests at heart you would have to have the patience of a saint to not get irritated about covering the same ground over and over.

She didn't strike Grace as a particularly credulous woman, which was definitely a good thing. As soon as they had sat down, she had called the psychic and he had arrived ten minutes later, lurking like a shadow in the background. He seemed like an average, well-dressed, middle-class gentleman, his clothing suggesting that perhaps he liked a quieter, more orderly life than most, and maybe enjoyed visiting art galleries on the weekend.

'I am Ordinary', his outlook seemed to say.

His eyes had lingered on Grace for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, as hers had on him.

 _Well then_ , she thought. _He's the genuine article at least. Assuming he's telling the truth of what he sees._

Now he was standing sentinel a little way away from them – not part of the group, but close enough to be there if Sandra needed him. Acting every inch the quiet emotional support that Grace hoped he was.

"We think the man who took her might've come by her work," JJ told Mrs Lombardini. "A customer. Someone she may have talked about."

Sandra shifted uncomfortably. Grace watched her micro-expressions, wondering. Was it that she had faith in Usher and not them? Maybe it was just the thought of someone hurting her daughter making her tense.

"We think this man is a loner," Rossi said, describing what they already knew of their unsub. "He would dine by himself, make frequent visits. But he's shy – avoids eye-contact."

"She got asked out sometimes," said Sandra, a lone tear travelling down her cheek.

 _She was a pretty girl. Must have been an occupational hazard._

"No. This guy wouldn't have asked her out," Rossi explained. "He wouldn't have had the courage. He would have stared at her, made her uncomfortable."

Sandra closed her eyes for a moment, clearly emotionally exhausted. "I've told the police everything I know," she said with gritted teeth. "You shouldn't be here. You should be looking into the clues."

There was a beat of silence in which JJ and Rossi shared a guarded look.

"Right," said Rossi, glancing at Usher. "Clues from Brooke's necklace."

Grace looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He was barely hiding his scorn and this grieving, terrified woman believed hard in what the psychic had to say. Surely he could see that they had to treat carefully here?

"Yes sir, it's called token object reading," Usher explained, quietly and respectfully. "Or –"

"Psychometry," Rossi interrupted. "Yeah, you're not my first."

He took out a notebook, missing the look of tolerant acceptance that crossed Usher's face at his subdued but obvious hostility.

"A fenced-in area; the colour orange; the numbers 8 6 7…" he read aloud, then stopped.

Usher nodded with quiet grace, confident in his own talents.

It boded well for his credulity.

"Does that help you?" Sandra asked, watching his face.

Rossi put his notebook away, refusing to answer.

"There are several other members of our team," said Grace, diplomatically. "Two of them are looking into them – and we'll keep them in mind when assessing any evidence we come across."

 _The official statement response,_ Grace grumbled to herself. _Bland and unprovoking._

Still, it seemed to satisfy Sandra – at least for the moment. They couldn't afford to disillusion her, not when they needed her cooperation. And it wasn't directly a lie – she had been specifically tasked with checking Usher – and by extension, his readings – out, and Hotch had an overall eye on the situation too.

"So, Mr Usher – by touching a personal item, you think that you can tell whether a person is alive or dead?" JJ asked. Her tone wasn't confrontational, just cautious, and Usher understood that, from the expression on his face.

"Sometimes," he said. "See, a person's energy makes an impression on anything they touch. It allows me to connect with them. Hard part is interpreting what I'm given, he admitted," with a touch of ruefulness that made the corners of Grace's mouth quirk minutely upwards. He spotted it, recognising an ally when he saw one, and gave the slightest inclination of his head in acknowledgement, before turning his attention back to JJ.

"Did you get anything else? About her condition?" she asked.

"Only that she felt weakened. Tired." He frowned. "I don't know. Heavy."

"Heavy?" Rossi repeated.

 _Like she's being drugged?_ Grace wondered privately, as Rossi led the psychic to another room. JJ's phone rang and she excused herself as well, leaving Grace alone with Sandra Lombardini. She fixed the agent with a penetrating stare.

"You don't believe a word he said," she accused.

Grace glanced in the direction Rossi and Usher had gone – doubtless for Rossi to have 'an official word' with the man. "Not all of us think the same way," she said gently. "But we have the impressions he received, and I will make sure they are taken into account."

Sandra continued to stare at her for a moment, before relaxing marginally (if anything she did in these dark days when her daughter was missing could be called relaxing) and sitting back.

 _Which just leaves the necklace,_ Grace thought. _And for that I will need privacy – however fleeting._

"Mrs Lombardini," she said as politely as she could. "I realise you're going through hell at the moment, but I don't suppose I could trouble you for a cup of tea?"

Startled out of her internal musings, Sandra graced her with something that was almost a smile. "Sure," she said. "It helps me to keep busy."

"I've always found it to be so," said Grace, and Sandra nodded, guessing that providing the relief of being able to do something was at least part of the reason for her asking.

She smiled her polite, professional smile as the other woman went towards the kitchen, aware that whatever she did, it would have to be quick.

When she was sure she was out of the room – and with a quick glance in the direction the others had gone – Grace slipped the necklace out of the evidence bag and held the pendant loosely in the palm of her hand. The chain she wrapped around her fingers, more to secure it than anything else.

Grace closed her eyes, slowing her breathing, relaxing her mind the way she had done a hundred times before back in London, but only once on this side of the Atlantic (and that over a year previously), allowing the sensations to come to her.

The amethyst blazed bright in her mind's eye, a beacon of energy; the rest of the images came in flashes, impressions.

 _Cold, hard metal_

 _Rain_

 _A bright flash of orange_

 _Rain_

 _Exhaustion, fear, pain_

 _Rain_

 _A metal grille, set into a wall_

 _Rain_

 _The Abbey Pale_

She opened her eyes, confused. The images were vague, blurry, though whether that was because Brooke was alive and drugged, or just dead and uncommunicative, Grace wasn't sure. She opted for the former, for the moment.

She frowned, quickly returning the necklace to the bag and the bag to its position on the dining table, wondering what the hell monastic buildings had to do with anything. She'd have to check the maps when she got in, she decided. Perhaps there were old abbey buildings nearby.

At least her impressions were roughly in accordance with Stanley Usher's, though that could have been because she had heard them before looking for herself. It never did anyone any favours to do a reading with prior knowledge, because even the most scrupulous psychic was prone to bias, even when (or perhaps, because) they genuinely wanted to help.

She made a few quick notes in her phone, these not being things she wanted to be found in her notebook proper, and tried to fathom what the hell they might mean.

Rain, at least, made sense. There had been a brief spell of sunshine since their arrival in Olympia, but apart from that the rain really hadn't stopped coming down. It was pooling on the station roof, flowing through the gutters and downspouts and turning the sidewalk outside into a stream. It had gone through everyone's clothing, saturating them to the core. Emily had been complaining about it out of the hearing of the locals, and even Hotch had been spotted wringing out his suit jacket in mild dismay.

It made Grace feel right at home. Quite apart from the similarity of the weather to London, the rain was heightening her senses; water was as good a conductor as amethyst – more so, in some ways. She had spent the better part of her life navigating through the world with one foot in the in-between, but this kind of hard, sweet spring rain – coupled with the opportunity to exercise her skills in a more acceptably professional fashion – was keeping her attention focused on the paranatural.

It was as if the all the shadows of the world were flickering, just beyond the periphery of her gaze. It was oddly thrilling, and probably more relaxing than it ought to be, now that she didn't need to maintain the illusion that she was normal with two members of her team any more. Still, none of the shadows was currently trying to get her attention, which probably boded well for Brooke Lombardini.

Usher was right. Interpretation was always the hardest part.

0o0

Three women were laid out on the cold metal tables, in varying states of decomposition, their heads tilted back. It was a result of the skin of their necks tightening as it began to dry and decompose, Spencer knew, but he couldn't help imagine they felt uncomfortable like that.

 _It's why they always look like they're screaming when we find them,_ Spencer thought.

Aloud, he said, "Lynette Hagan, Erin Bonham and Melissa St Clair. All embalmed."

"It's the first three," Morgan observed. "That leaves the Lombardini girl still out there."

 _But we knew that already,_ Spencer thought, and then corrected himself. _Well, Pearce did, and I did by watching her behaviour._

"D'you figure out cause of death?" Morgan asked the coroner.

"Blood loss," she said simply.

 _Exanguination._

"Blood loss?" Spencer echoed, with a frown. "They were alive when they were embalmed?"

"Looks that way," she replied, pragmatically. "Tox' screens show signification levels of barbiturate. They were sedated, maybe unconscious."

"Score one for the weird British lady," Morgan murmured, as Spencer privately agreed. "Reid, look at this," he continued, more audibly. "They all have the same haircut."

"Yeah," he said, and pulled out their pictures from the file. "These are recent photos, though," he said, showing them to the coroner. "These two had much longer hair at the time of their abduction," he said, pointing at the two more recent victims.

"So the unsub cut it," Morgan realised.

"Something else he may have done," said the coroner, studying the photographs. "Their ears have all been double pierced."

Spencer bent down to check the earlobes of the nearest victim and saw that she was right. Quite soon before death, too, if the looks of the bruising were anything to go by.

"Were they sexually assaulted?" Morgan asked.

The coroner pulled a face. "Not exactly. There was no tearing or bruising that would normally suggest it… but I did find trace amounts of semen," she added heavily.

Spencer frowned, mildly confused and straightened up. "You're saying it may have been consensual?"

The coroner looked at him like he was a first year med student who had somehow managed to insert a thermometer up someone's nose. "No."

Morgan gave him a similar look. "She's sayin' they were dead."

 _Oh God,_ Spencer thought, with mounting horror. _And I thought it couldn't get worse._

0o0

"They don't know about you, do they?"

Grace's eyes slid right. She had been looking out of the window, waiting for Rossi and JJ to finish with Sandra Lombardini.

"Not officially," she said simply.

Usher nodded and came to stand beside her. "Your colleague thinks I'm a fraud."

"Rossi?" she asked, and he inclined his head. "He asked you to back off."

"In a similar turn of phrase, yes."

Grace raised her eyebrows at that. It didn't do to be rude, even when you felt you were looking out for the best interests of the family.

"You read the necklace."

It wasn't a question, more a statement of fact. An acceptance of a likely pattern of behaviour, perhaps – or had he been able to sense her at work, disturbing the energy of the house?

"Yes," she replied. There was no sense in lying. "Amethyst is a useful stone to have in this sort of situation. Gives a bit of a boost."

Usher nodded. "I could feel it from the next room."

Grace smiled slightly. He sounded mildly impressed. "That obvious, huh."

"Get anything useful?"

"Not much more than you, I'm afraid," she said, neglecting to add any detail. Just because he had genuine power – and because she liked him – didn't mean she would compromise the investigation by giving anything away. "I always read better when they're dead."

He looked at her then for a moment, sensing something in her energy perhaps. "That's a darker path than mine."

"Yes, Grace agreed. "And unfathomably painful and frightening at times. But it's who I am."

"Lonely."

"At times. I've grown accustomed to keeping to the shadows – as I think you have."

He nodded again, accepting that, and turned his attention back out to the garden. "I sensed you from outside the front door – and then I heard your name."

She tensed, but he didn't seem overly concerned – just curious.

"I remember reading it a while back, alongside another. Hard to forget a thing like that."

Not an accusation; just a statement. Grace allowed herself to relax a little.

Stanley Usher sent her a look along his shoulder. "What are _you_ doing in the FBI?" he wondered aloud.

"Same thing you are, helping people like Sandra Lombardini and her daughter." She flashed a smile in his direction. "I have a talent for evidence, as well as for… other things."

"Like trouble?" Usher asked, but she sensed that he was only teasing.

Chances were, he also had a past he chose not to acknowledge.

"Oh, certainly that," she responded, meeting his gaze dead on. "Honestly, I'm glad to find someone else who understands."

He nodded again, and she understood that he meant that it was pleasant for him, also.

They stood side by side for a few minutes, watching the falling rain.

"At least we know she's alive," he reflected at last, when the sounds of Grace's colleagues approaching filtered through from the dining room. He removed himself, not wanting to show that they were in any way associated – a consideration made for her benefit, she fancied.

Grace watched the reflection of his retreating form in the window.

For the moment, she thought.

0o0

"I spoke to the families," JJ told them "None of the victims had double pierced ears at the time of their abduction."

"Cutting hair and piercing ears," Aaron mused.

"He's changing them," Rossi said, completing his friend's thought.

"Into what, though?" Morgan wondered.

"Into who?" Rossi added.

"Into his ideal," said Pearce. "His 'type'."

Aaron glanced in her direction. Although he had read the results of the autopsy from Morgan and Reid's pale, grim faces when they had walked into the police department an hour earlier, along with the slim, disturbing file they had brought with them, no one had explicitly said what every agent in the room was thinking out loud. They were all determinedly skirting around an issue that would have even hardened law enforcement officers squeamish and jittery.

He half-expected Pearce to voice what no one was saying; she was usually the first to call a spade a spade, no matter how weird or disturbing a spade it was.

They were back at the Olympia Police Department, dampness forgotten. The reality of what had happened to these women – both before and after their deaths – had quite put any present discomfort out of the teams' heads. It was too horrible to contemplate.

"The burials suggest an affection for his victims," Morgan reflected.

"Which means he's making them into the image of a loved one," Aaron supposed.

"The ME found high levels of barbiturate?" JJ asked, reading the autopsy report.

"Yeah, why?" Morgan responded.

"Just – uh – something the psychic said," said JJ, frowning. "That Brooke felt tired, heavy."

"Why are we talking about the psychic?" Rossi snapped. "It's a scam. These guys talk without saying anything and you're fallin' for it."

 _Why is this getting to you so badly?_ Aaron wondered, looking thoughtfully at his old friend.

"Alright, keep your hair on," said Pearce tolerantly. "You were talking about Italian fashion on the drive over, no one jumped down your throat."

Aaron glanced at her again, wondering how long that tolerance would last. Dave sent her a scathing look, but JJ spoke before he could turn on her, too.

"Well, he said that Brooke's alive," she said simply. "I guess I just wanna believe him."

Aaron nodded, cutting them off before it could devolve into an argument. "JJ, you know the profile."

Rossi nodded, pleased to sense an ally. "A necrophiliac has no use for a live victim."

"Ding ding! There it is," Pearce muttered under her breath. "Someone ring the necrophilia gong."

Morgan flashed a half-smile-half-grimace in her direction, evidently in complete agreement at her frustrated mix of disgust and black humour.

Aaron ignored her, focussing instead on JJ. She frowned, but of all the team, JJ could generally be trusted to keep her opinion to herself. She had good instincts for people.

He sighed and scanned the assorted detectives and officers who had been gathering in the office for the last ten minutes.

This was going to be a fun one.

"You ready to talk to them?" he said aloud.

Accustomed to saying a thing and having it interpreted as an order, he was not much surprised when the others moved off, taking their places. Only Dave lingered, pulling away from the others and taking out his cell phone. "Garcia, I need you to run a full background check for me. Name's Usher. Stanley Usher."

Aaron gave him a warning look, but withheld any comment. If the guy's background checked out they could exclude him – and maybe take into account what he had to say, if Pearce thought he was worth listening to.

She had taken a perch at the far end of the line, just one step outside where he would expect someone to put themselves if they were comfortable, her mask of calm professionalism firmly in place.

Interesting, he thought. He would have to keep an eye on that, in case it was more than just Dave ruffling her feathers.

He moved in front of the boards and called the room to order.

"Alright," said Aaron, after the introductions had been made. "By now we know that the DNA found in the victims does not match anyone in the system, so we're gonna have to look beyond physically evidence to identify the killer."

"Our unsub is a white male in his mid-to-late twenties – and he has money," Prentiss told the room. "He lives alone in a large residence. There's enough space and ventilation to accommodate an embalming suite."

"Look for properties set apart from their neighbours," Pearce suggested. "Embalming is an unpleasantly fragrant process. You're likely looking for somewhere remote, or a location where the odours associated with embalming and death won't raise too many eyebrows, like an industrial or agricultural area, or somewhere associated with medicine."

"He's educated, but awkward with people – especially women," Aaron continued. "An inability to relate socially is common in homicidal necrophiles."

"Because of the alterations to the bodies, we believe the unsub is attempting to recreate a woman he once loved," Morgan explained.

"Like a girlfriend?" Detective Duran queried in mild surprise.

"Or a wife, a mother," Aaron replied. "Someone who left or died suddenly."

"Necrophiles are fantasists," Pearce added. "It could be someone in the unsub's life they felt close to, but who considered them a friend, rather than anything more."

"So the person this creep is recreating could be a figment of their imagination?" a female officer asked, from the near the back of the room.

"No, Pearce clarified. "Their fantasies will be anchored in reality. This will be a person who was in this unsub's life – they just might not have realised how much they meant to him."

"This projection of the loved one, coupled with his need to preserve the victims through embalming is similar to the psychopathology of serial killer Ed Gein," said Reid. "Gein had an oedipal complex which developed in the years he nursed his paralysed mother back from a stroke. After she died, his obsession compelled him to dig up corpses of women who resembled his mother. So persistent was his desire to resurrect his dead mother that he actually dressed from female 'suits' fashioned from human skin. Eventually, gein grew unhappy with the flesh of dead bodies, which had a tendency to dry and crack, so he shifted his focus to live victims, whose bodies he could better preserve."

"The evolution from dead to live victims will also be mirrored in our unsub's maturation," Aaron went on, as everybody grimaced.

Prentiss picked up a sheaf of papers and handed them to Detective Fullwood. "We've put together a list of incident reports prior to 2006. You're gonna wanna follow up on these. "Uh – they are inappropriate post-mortem conduct, cadaver theft and graveyard disturbance."

She moved back to her place as ripples of disgust ran around the room; none of the officers in this room had realised necrophilia and its accompanying behaviours was quite so wide-spread in the place they called home.

"Sixty percent of necrophiles work in the death business," Reid reminded them. "So be sure to canvas local cemeteries, mortuaries and morgues."

"And since we have the killer's DNA, we're going to be sending you out with kits to swab any potential suspects," said Mogan, holding a couple of kits up to demonstrate.

"The odds of finding Brooke Lombardini alive are slim," Aaron summed up. "But the quicker we identify the killer, the better her chances are. For her sake, let's work fast."


	8. Skin Crawlers

**Essential Listening: Friend is a Four Letter Word, by Cake**

 **0o0**

There were an inordinate number of post mortem and human remains related offenders in Olympia and the surrounding towns. It was probably the same number as in other counties, but generally you didn't group them all together unless you got an unsub like this. It was a bit of a horror show to look at all at once.

Grace flicked through the reports one by one. She and the others had spent their afternoon visiting cemeteries, mortuaries, morgues, crematoria, graveyards and undertakers. Necrophilia wasn't a thing the mortuary community liked to discuss – particularly outside their own groups. Nobody wanted to think of their dearly departed being groomed or violated. People expected their eternal rest to be peaceful and – well – eternal.

Ivan Bakunas had seemed like a solid bet, what with the history of putting makeup on the corpses at the funeral home during his apprenticeship with the Medical Examiner and the blonde wig he'd left behind. It was enough, along with his refusal to let them look around his home or submit a DNA sample, to let Garcia go to town on his records. Now she had, though, they were less certain.

Grace, Hotch and Prentiss were ranged around Fullwood's desk, waiting for the rest of the manna from tech heaven.

"Did you find anything on Ivan Bakunas?" Emily asked, perching on the edge of Ron Fullwood's desk.

" _Nothing in juvie,"_ Garcia replied, _"but he was expelled from Evergreen State for assaulting his girlfriend."_

"Sexual?" Prentiss clarified.

" _He was slipping her tranquilisers and having sex with her while she slept,"_ Garcia told them.

Emily grimaced. "That qualifies."

Garcia gave an exaggerated gasp. _"Wait – Emily, maybe this is that romantic encounter your horoscope foretold!"_

"Bye Garcia," said Prentiss, amused, and hung up.

"Between that and the wig, I should be able to persuade a judge," said the detective.

He had a tired but hopeful expression on his face, the kind a copper got when a case that was haunting you finally started to move. Grace felt for him. He wasn't going to enjoy their input.

"Detective, I'm not going to stand in your way if you want to serve a warrant on Bakunas," Hotch told him, letting him down as gently as he could. "But I think you're wasting your time."

"You're kidding, right?" Detective Fullwood asked, exasperated.

"We profiled a man of means," Emily reminded him. "According to his tax records, Bakunas hasn't held down a job since he graduated college. He lives with his mother, doesn't have a car…"

"There's no way he could have access to the world these women lived and worked in," Grace added. "And he's not exactly the waitering type – he goes for low level medical positions. Things that give him a taste of status in his chosen field." She grimaced. "And give him access to cadavers."

"The embalming equipment, the drugs – that stuff's not cheap," Hotch added.

Fullwood shook his head. "Look, this guy likes to get it on with dead people. If that's not probable cause, I don't know what is."

Grace nodded, reflecting that she would probably have felt the same, on her own patch.

They were spared further comment, however, because JJ came into the office at some speed. "Hotch," she said at once, looking worried. "A 911 operator just got a distress call from someone claiming to be Brooke Lombardini."

Her pulse quickening with shock, Grace dropped the file on the desk without ceremony, and followed the others out of the room.

0o0

" _911, what is your emergency?"_

" _Hello?"_

" _Can you speak up, ma'am"_

" _No, he'll hear me! This is brooke lombardini. Please – I need help!"_

It was a recording, made as per procedure and replicated for the benefit of Brooke's mother. Her daughter's strained, quiet voice was slurred and a little groggy, like she had just woken up – or had been drugged. She sounded terrified.

" _Where are you calling from, ma'am?"_

" _I'm being held prisoner."_

" _Okay ma'am, can you look outside? Can you see a street name or an address?"_

" _Please – I think he's…"_

" _Ma'am?"_

"… _gonna kill me. Please help. No wait –"_

Jj turned the recording off. The young woman's desperation was painful to listen to, even for seasoned agents, but it was on another level entirely for Brooke's mother.

Sandra was crying, silently, trying to remain upright and strong for her daughter. "That's her, she said, taking a shuddering breath. That's Brooke."

"You're certain?" Morgan asked gently.

Sandra nodded.

"She's barely audible," Rossi complained.

The other agents all shot looks at him like he'd lost his mind – and then tried to look like they hadn't, because Fullwood and Lombardini were still in the room.

"Any surveillance expert will tell you it's almost impossible to positively identify a whisper."

 _What is he doing?_ Spencer thought, astonished.

Yes, sometimes people derived a perverse kind of gratification from by putting themselves into an investigation, and would go to any lengths to do it – even impersonating a victim or giving false testimony – but you couldn't say something like that to an emotionally compromised member of a victim's family. Not so directly or so bluntly They were victims themselves – and they needed her on their side.

Besides, there was no reason to antagonise her when she was already crying.

Not unreasonably, Sandra Lombardini fixed him with a steely gaze. "You think I don't know my own daughter's voice?"

"Why would someone who is not Brooke call 911 and say they were?" Detective Fullwood asked.

"Sometimes people get off injecting themselves into the story," Rossi explained, a little more harshly than was necessary. He turned back to Sandra. "You've been on TV now, and that could bring out a lot of sick individuals."

 _True, but we don't need to tell her that,_ Spencer thought desperately, glancing around at his colleagues, hoping one of them would know how to stop Rossi saying what he was saying without ruining the investigation.

 _How can he not tell what he's doing to her?_

Sandra gave Rossi up as a bad job and turned to Detective Fullwood instead. "Stanley said she was alive. This proves it."

"Stanley Usher has a vested interest in telling you that your daughter is alive," Rossi said, with a touch of smugness.

"That's neither here nor there," said Pearce sharply. Spencer glanced at her and glimpsed the same, unflappable quality she had shown in Portland, when something had threatened the forensic integrity of a crime scene. It was as if she had forgotten, temporarily, that Rossi was a senior agent and she was not. She turned to Sandra, effectively shutting him out. "Ma'am, are you sure that was your daughter's voice?"

"Yes," said Sandra, with complete certainty.

"Okay," said Pearce, obviously trying to diffuse things and get the woman out of the room where she could be upset in private, but Rossi wasn't having any of it.

"I'm telling you, Stanley Usher has a vested interest in telling you that your daughter is alive," he repeated, and Sandra's head whipped round.

"And do you have a vested interest in telling me that she's not?" she demanded, obviously angry and distressed.

"He has a record, ma'am," said Rossi doggedly.

 _Man, just let it go,_ he pleaded inside his head.

Behind him, Spencer heard Pearce make a noise of intense frustration.

JJ, standing up in an entirely nonchalant manner, contrived to stand on her foot and prevent further comment.

"I had a colleague look into it," Rossi continued.

Entirely without meaning to, Spencer found himself studying the ceiling, embarrassed and mildly appalled. This was completely unnecessary.

"Usher was charged with fraud in Oregon," said Rossi, handing Sandra Lombardini a slim file. "Before he upped stakes and moved here."

Brooke's mother closed the file with remarkable tolerance. She took a shaky breath, obviously trying to fight off more tears, and picked up her bag. "I need my baby to be alive," she said, avoiding any of their eyes. She turned and fled, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Detective Fullwood scooted around the table and went after her, and so did JJ.

"All she has right now is hope," she said, as she passed Rossi. "Why would you take that from her?"

As soon as he was out of the room, Pearce rounded on him. "What the fuck was that?"

She had spoken quite quietly, definitely not loud enough to reach outside the room, even with the door open a crack, but with a deadly sort of insistence that could not readily be ignored.

"Excuse me?" Evidently, though he looked a little chastened at Ms Lombardini's response, Rossi had not been expecting a rebuke, particularly not from a junior member of the team.

"That woman is going through the kind of hell that defies description right now," Pearce hissed. "She is lost and terrified, because some creep has her daughter and might murder her at any moment, if she isn't already dead. If Stanley Usher's readings are all she has to cling to in order to get through the next few days, then let her. You have absolutely no right to take that away."

She was still speaking in that quiet, forced voice, but now Spencer could see that she was slightly pinker than she ought to be, and her eyes were flashing with a depth of anger that was unusual, given the circumstances.

Fleetingly, he recalled the moments she had looked at him that way – on the jet when they left West Bune, the minutes leading up to that punch in Vegas.

 _One of us ought to stop this_ , he thought, but didn't move.

She and JJ were right. That was no way to treat someone as distressed as that woman clearly was.

Rossi, however, was in no mood to cool things down. As soon as the possibility of a medium had been raised he had become prickly and bad tempered. Really, it was only a matter of time before something like this flared up, particularly given Pearce's experience – and her own problematic temper.

"It's a scam!" he shot back. "She ought to know that! It could sway the investigation in entirely the wrong direction, and that's not going to help Brooke Lombardini at all."

"Uh guys?" Spencer found himself saying, but both agents ignored him – assuming they had heard him at all.

"It's not having a negative impact on the investigation," she retorted. "None of us are letting the information Usher presented us, or Sandra, or Detective Fullwood with guide us in any direction whatsoever. We're looking at the profile and the data, and if some of the information Usher came up with reflects that and helps us narrow it down, then great."

It was obvious that she hadn't intended to stop there, but Rossi interrupted. "There you go again! It won't help us narrow anything down! I can't believe you've been taken in by this guy, it –"

"And if it doesn't help us then there's no harm done!" Pearce snapped, raising her voice a little to talk over the top of him. "Irrespective of that, you've got to stop treating Sandra Lombardini like an idiot. It's disrespectful."

"Guys…" Morgan warned, behind him, Prentiss covered her face with her hand.

"Oh, and you're telling me you believe all this crap?" Rossi demanded.

There was a second of silence in which Spencer was certain he read a flicker of something in Pearce's face – a mad desire to tell Rossi everything, perhaps, to reach out and rattle all the furniture in the room, or fill the ceiling with butterflies, just to prove him wrong. It was gone in an instant, replaced by an expression that was unusually bitter.

"It doesn't matter what I believe," she said, in a much softer, more controlled tone. "It doesn't matter what any of us believe. We're here to do a job. And what you're doing to that woman is helping no one."

She turned on her heel and walked swiftly out of the room, probably to stop herself saying anything more.

"Grace!" Emily called after her, but she ignored her.

Acting on an instinct he didn't know he still had, Spencer followed her out, leaving the sound of Rossi's grousing behind him.

Hotch, who had obviously been in conference with Detective Duran, looked up, spotted them and frowned. He made a beeline for them, and for a moment Spencer wondered whether he thought they had had another falling out.

Really, he reflected, that would have been far more likely. He and Pearce didn't have the best track record for cordiality. He shook his head on Hotch's questioning glance. However, their boss appeared to have calculated his route across the room quite precisely in order to force both his agents into a kind of bottleneck in one corner of the room. Spencer arrived just behind Pearce, unable to turn around and take an alternative route, or pretend he was heading to the bathroom, but to his surprise, Pearce didn't huff at him in annoyance, or snap at him for following her (though for about three seconds she had the look of a woman who was about to climb over the tables in order to get past Hotch).

Instead, she crossed her arms and sent Hotch a look that was somewhere between 'yes boss, what do you want?' and a direct challenge.

"Hey, hey," he said, one hand up either to placate or slow their progress. It was uncertain which. "What happened?"

"Rossi's…" she trailed off, scowling, and then looked at Hotch directly, ignoring the fact that Spencer was there (or perhaps simply accepting his presence). "Stanley Usher is on the level, one hundred percent."

Spencer looked from Grace to Hotch and then back again, astonished. He'd asked her to check Usher out – knowingly.

Their serious boss had made a serious request for Pearce to do something seriously weird in the middle of an investigation. For a second, Spencer felt like the world was just a little off-balance. Asking her to show him the spirit of a murder victim was one thing, but doing something that might have an impact on evidence, or the direction a case went? That was something else.

"The impressions we got from the necklace, they aren't definitive and they aren't particularly helpful, but they're honest," said Pearce shortly. "Usher doesn't need Rossi investigating him and Sandra Lombardini doesn't need us belittling her or jumping down her throat every thirty seconds – and she absolutely doesn't need us telling her that her girl is dead when we have absolutely no evidence of that. It's a complete waste of time – and it's cruel, frankly."

She huffed then, and almost shrugged. "And I need some air, excuse me."

They watched her go, stalking towards the main doors with the air of someone who knew perfectly well it was bucketing down outside and no longer cared.

"What happened?" Hotch asked, when she was gone.

"Uh… pretty much what you would imagine, given what she said," Spencer told him, conscious that Pearce's exit was beginning to attract them some attention from the other members of law enforcement in the room.

Hotch sighed, looking momentarily exhausted. "Do I need to have a word with Rossi?"

Spencer hesitated, which Hotch evidently took as 'yes, but I don't want to snitch on my friend'; he nodded.

"Keep an eye on her."

He met Hotch's eyes for a moment before pretending he had been making for the coffee machine after all and not following his colleague in case she or Rossi decided to go for round two. They could both be hotheads from time to time, but generally speaking, when Pearce walked away, she had made a conscious effort to disengage. Stopping her wouldn't end well, which he knew from personal experience.

He rubbed his jaw, reaching for the coffee.

It took a lot to piss Pearce off, but there were buttons that – if pushed – could make for a spectacular display. He had a map of them in his head. Her anger was like a firework – one bright flash, quickly fading to something quiet and tired. Not like his; Spencer could go for weeks simmering about something that by the end of it, he could barely remember.

 _Quite a pair we make,_ he thought ruefully, and then dismissed the thought.

There was no room for 'pairs' here, even if she had finished with 'Mr Trendy' and was technically available. He couldn't risk letting his guard down around her again.

 _And neither can she,_ his treacherous mind supplied.

He was walking away from the kitchenette when he realised he had made (and was carrying) a cup of tea, as well as his own coffee, without any noticeable input from his brain. Spencer frowned at the unexpected beverage for a moment before heading outside.

He found her in the lee of the building around the corner from the main entrance, which not even the hardy local smokers were braving in the current weather. The lights on that part of the exterior were malfunctioning, it seemed, and at first he'd thought the space was empty, before she moved and he caught the glint of light from the windows reflected in her eyes. In the seconds it took to cross to her, he was soaked to the skin.

Spencer handed her the tea and leaned against the wall beside her, pushing his sopping wet hair back from his face. She barely acknowledged him, except to accept the tea, gazing out across the parking lot, each streetlamp forming little puddles of light.

"Hey," he said, when the silence became too much for him.

"Hey."

More silence, then:

"Hotch sent you out here to keep an eye on me."

It wasn't an accusation, though it could have been; more a statement of fact, or a guess. Spencer looked at the floor for a moment before nodding.

Pearce nodded too, though neither of them had turned towards the other, still staring out into the rain.

It brought to mind another rain-soaked street on quite a different day, but Spencer didn't want to dwell on that, so instead he cleared his throat. "You read the necklace."

It was her turn to nod. "Yes."

"Anything useful?"

"Nothing useable," she told him. "Just impressions. A colour, a sensation of fear, a phrase – that sort of thing. Nothing I can make head or tail of – as usual." She slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and showed him a note she had made of the impressions.

"'The Abbey Pale'?" he read aloud, confused.

 _What could that mean? The 'pale' was the area outside the gates of an abbey, a prime place for traders to pitch their stalls in medieval Europe. Was there a monastery nearby, or a convent? A disused building, perhaps? Somewhere the unsub could work without being disturbed?_

"I checked, the nearest thing that might count as an abbey is outside Pierce County," she told him, guessing the direction of his thoughts.

Spencer grunted, disappointed.

"I know," she said, with a huff that sent a cloud of her breath out into the night, to be dispersed by the rain. "I hate psychometry. Nine times out of ten all you get is something so vague it's bloody useless – right up until you've found everything and are reviewing the work, and only then do you see how it all fits together. It's like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle backwards, with no picture, and all the pieces are made out of water."

Spencer chuckled, despite himself.

 _It's a good thing it's too dark to see her face,_ he thought. _She's so cute when she's annoyed._

He coughed, wondering where that thought had come from and sternly informing it that it could go right back the way it came.

"Think Rossi'll be speaking to me on the jet home?" she asked, halfway flippant; he could tell from the straightness of her shadow that it was worrying her, however.

"Well… maybe after we land," he said, trying to lighten her mood, and was rewarded with what sounded like a snort of amusement, but was quickly covered by a cough.

"I don't have a great track record with keeping my temper," she said ruefully, and it seemed to Spencer that the silence that followed was somehow overcharged, as if it held a lot more than the words she had said aloud.

Spencer swallowed. "Yeah, well," he said quietly, feeling oddly breathless. "I could say the same."

The two agents stood quietly for a few minutes, sipping their drinks and watching the rain, neither feeling the need to say more on a subject that might never be properly discussed. The silence, such as it was, with the rain pouring down outside their shelter, was broken by the arrival of a car that pulled into the parking lot across from them, briefly blinding them as the twin beams of light illuminated their patch of wall. Pearce shifted and Spencer guessed that the time she had allotted herself for calming down had passed.

They dashed together through the rain, splashing through the puddles. Behind them, the lights on the section of wall they had been leaning against flickered back on, as if they had been politely looking the other way while Pearce had been standing beneath them.

"You were right," he said, when they were inside the door; Pearce looked at him, and he knew that she had more than half read from him that he wasn't talking just about Rossi.

She looked away, across the room, and nodded to herself. "Being right isn't everything," she said softly.

 _No,_ he thought. _Not by a long way._

Spencer was about to turn away then, to take his mug back to the kitchenette and see if they'd got anywhere with anyone other than Bakunas, but something stopped him.

 _She's bone dry,_ he thought, with a start.

"How are you not even damp?" he asked aloud, and it was almost a complaint. A trickle of cold water ran down the nape of his neck and into his collar, soaking into his already wet shirt.

Pearce sent him a look that was pure mischief: a wide, slightly impish grin forming on her lips and a bright flash of laughter in her eyes. Spencer's stomach did an unhelpful little flip just at the sight of it.

"One of the perks," she said, cryptically.

She brushed her hand down the sleeve of his jacket as she passed; Spencer suppressed a shiver at her sudden (if brief) proximity, then realised he was no longer cold. He lifted a hand to his hair and discovered that it – along with the rest of him – was completely dry.

He turned, looking baffled.


	9. Graven Idol

**Essential listening: Pure Morning, by Placebo**

 **0o0**

Emily and Hotch stalked through the police department. The minor disagreement between Rossi, JJ and Grace had put everyone into a bit of a spin – except for Grace herself, apparently, and Reid. It had manifested in Emily, JJ and Morgan as a kind of restless energy. Rossi was just extra grumpy, and Hotch was – well, Hotch.

Consequently, she had spent the last twenty minutes cross-checking things with Garcia and pacing around the cafeteria.

"911 call came from a disposable cell," she told Hotch as they walked back to Homicide. "No ID, but they traced it to the nearest tower. And it narrows it down to a twenty mile radius, here." She showed him on the map. "Just southeast of Seattle."

"That's a densely populated area," he remarked. "Were they able to triangulate?"

"Uh – Garcia tried to ping the phone, but it was already dead," Emily said. "The unsub probably turned it off when he found her with it."

Grace, Reid and Morgan were standing by the board detectives Fullwood and Duran had set up prior to the team's arrival. They looked around as the others approached.

"You mean _if_ he found her," Rossi put in, joining them.

Grace rolled her eyes, but forbore further comment.

"Dave, I agree with you about being careful including psychics in an investigation," said Hotch, "but the fact is Sandra Lombardini positively identified her daughter's voice. We have to assume that call was genuine."

Rossi nodded, mollified.

"So, what do we think? Why is the unsub keeping Brooke alive?" Hotch asked, opening up the discussion to the team at large. "And how long do you think she has until he kills her?"

"Maybe he needs them alive to effect their transformation," Reid speculated.

"But changin' the hair, the makeup, piercin' the ears – that would only take a few hours," Morgan pointed out.

Rossi nodded. "And he's had her for almost five days."

"Okay, so maybe it's about something more than just appearance," Emily suggested. "Maybe it's something deeper."

"He buried the first three victims with crosses," Grace recalled. "Maybe he wants to connect with them on a spiritual level."

"On the phone she made it sound like she was being locked up – and she sounded drugged." Reid cleared his throat, possibly aware that he didn't want to bring up anything to remind Rossi of the psychic's predictions. "These are control mechanisms used in cases of sexual slavery, mind control…"

"He's brainwashing," Morgan realised.

"He wants to make her into someone else entirely, or his fantasy doesn't work," said Grace.

"So, he's trying to break her down, make her surrender her identity," Hotch continued.

Rossi agreed. "That's what he's waiting for. That's the version of them he wants to hold onto."

"So, the longer she holds out, the longer she stays alive," Morgan guessed.

"And as soon as she accepts her new role, her fate is sealed," Hotch added, with a grimace.

"Well then," said Grace. "Let's hope she's a fighter."

0o0

A scant half hour later, and Emily was on the phone with the local forensic lab who had been hard at work processing the multitude of samples their search of nearby necrophilia or body snatching suspects had generated. She hung up, shaking her head at Rossi, who had wandered over from the incident board.

"That was the lab with the DNA swabs," she told him.

"No matches?"

She shook her head and he pulled a face. It changed very quickly into something much darker and for a moment Emily wondered whether someone had wheeled a fresh corpse in behind her.

"What's _he_ doing here?" Rossi asked, staring at the door to the department. Emily turned to see Detective Fullwood leading a gentleman into his office.

"Detective, a word?" Rossi said, striding forward before Emily could intercede. She closed her eyes for a moment and picked up the nearest file so she didn't look like she was eavesdropping. It was a fairly quiet room, however, so she overheard most of it without wanting to.

"Do you know what you're doin'?" Rossi asked, when he had taken the detective to one side.

Emily risked a glance at the man who was presumably their psychic, now waiting politely by the door. Was it her imagination, or were his eyes fixed on Grace and Reid, currently trawling through paperwork on the far side of the room?

Fullwood sighed. "I can't afford to let my ego get in the way on this one. I'll take all the help I can get."

"Look, I'm happy to be wrong about Brooke," said Rossi. "Hell, I'm praying I am. But I'm _not_ wrong about this guy."

Emily nodded. Rossi was generally a good judge of character – but then, so were JJ and Grace. She looked up in time to see JJ come out of the back, spot Usher and walk over to him.

"Mr Usher, good to see you again," she said warmly, shaking his hand.

"And you."

Usher held onto her hand for just a little longer than was strictly necessary, then his smile broadened. Emily frowned. It wasn't like it was a come on, just like he'd had good news, and JJ seemed more puzzled than uncomfortable.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked.

"I'm spoken for," he joked, and nodded over her shoulder, towards Detective Fullwood and Rossi, who now looked to be in a particularly foul mood.

She laughed. "Ah."

"This way," Fullwood said, inviting him into his office.

"Ma'am?" said Usher, catching JJ's attention as she walked away. He rubbed the space on his hand where a ring would be. "Congratulations on the birth of your son."

Emily felt her mouth fall open. Across the room, JJ looked at the ring she and Will had picked out to commemorate Henry's birth, surprised.

0o0

Ivan Bakunas had been dragged back to the Olympia Police Department, having tried to make an ill-advised break for it across the border into Vancouver. Although there was little doubt at this point that he was a necrophiliac, it was highly unlikely that he had been involved in these abductions. As frustrating as it was, now that he had tried to run, Fullwood had to eliminate him from their enquiries as best they could.

Both Rossi and Hotch had been a bit frustrated about that, she knew, but Bakunas had rather forced the detective's hand – and it was exactly what she and her team would have had to do back in the UK. You had to follow procedure sometimes, even if you were ninety-nine percent sure it was off the mark, to ensure that nothing got missed that might lead to the conviction of the wrong person, or the lack of conviction of the right one.

At least it meant they had grounds to compel a DNA sample, which could help to cross him off their list that bit quicker.

Rossi had been convinced that this was further evidence that Fullwood was falling under the influence of Usher, who Fullwood had allowed to 'read' the wig, but Grace wasn't. Detective Fullwood didn't strike her as particularly credulous. Plus, she had seen Usher's face when he'd come out of the detective's office having handled the wig; he had had the look of a man who had seen too much.

Whatever his involvement (or lack thereof) in this case, Bakunas would likely be discovering his freedom somewhat curtailed in the near future.

So now, she, Reid and Hotch were watching Fullwood and Prentiss carefully taking apart Bakunas's statements in the hope that his flight and subsequent detention might be useful.

He was clearly unhappy to be there – especially since they'd brought out the wig his previous employers had found him using on cadavers – but he was also agitated and frustrated. The only person he'd asked to call had been his mother, who he didn't want to worry, and not his lawyer. This, in Grace's experience, was not the behaviour of a guilty man. At least – not in this specific context.

Still, innocence could be faked.

"You have the wrong –" he protested, shoving the crime scene photos away.

"The wrong necrophile?" Fullwood interrupted.

Bakunas shot him an insolent look. "What, you think I'm the only guy in town who likes to crack open a cold one?"

And he was a total asshole.

"Urgh," said Grace aloud, as she, Reid and Hotch exchanged looks of pure disgust. "I'm going to need a whole new barrel of mind-bleach for this one."

Inside the interrogation room, Prentiss looked momentarily like she might gag, but she hid it while Bakunas was still enjoying the look on Fullwood's face.

"You getting anything from him?"

Grace glanced at Hotch, who was watching her out of the corner of his eye. Aware of Reid's presence, she looked at him, too, then back at Hotch. "Um…"

"I – uh – I could wait outside, if –" Reid began to offer, but Hotch shook his head.

 _Well then,_ she thought, _if I'm to be allowed to speak freely…_

"Other than a powerful urge to barf all over him, no," she said.

"Could you –" he began, but Grace guessed where he was going.

"No. It doesn't work like that. I'm not telepathic." She paused as the interview continued. "And frankly, right now I'm quite relieved about that."

Both men nodded their agreement, as if they were merely discussing the weather.

It felt very surreal to be standing behind the glass – an inherently law enforcement, real world, normal sort of environment – with two people who had spent their lives putting their faith in science and logic, treating her abilities like just another resource. It reminded her of London, but this time instead of feeling a kind of painful nostalgia, instead she experienced a rush of gratitude for these two friends who had taken her weirdness in their stride and allowed her to be her very strange self among them – even just for a short while.

"I don't kill people!" Bakunas was saying, emphasising every word.

Grace put her head on one side. As much of a creep as he was, she believed him.

"These FBI folks think this killer is trying to turn these girls into a loved one," said Fullwood, prowling around the table. "Like girlfriend, or a wife, or a mom. Is your mother a blonde, Ivan?"

He held up the wig to emphasise the question.

Bakunas was clearly getting annoyed now. "That's disgusting!" he retorted.

 _Everyone has a line they won't cross, I guess,_ thought Grace.

"The wig isn't even the important part," Bakunas told Emily, almost desperately. "For me it's – it's the shoes…"

"So, you put shoes on them too?" Emily asked.

Bakunas nodded, frustrated with proceedings, but oddly candid, like he was relieved to be able to talk about it finally. "They're a very special pair."

"What's special about them?" said Emily.

"The woman who walked in 'em," he admitted. "Sunny Raines."

"The weather girl?" Fullwood asked, as Emily looked blank.

"Really? There's nominative determinism at work," Grace muttered.

"She was a local celebrity, killed in a car accident a couple years ago," the detective explained.

Bakunas nodded. "A friend of mind was working when she came in on the slab. He knew I was a fan."

"Oh, so he stole her shoes for you?" Emily asked, as if this was the most reasonable thing to do in the world.

"The wig – that just completed the look, but the shoes…" Bakunas smiled to himself, remembering, before the look of fear and mild self-disgust crept back across his face. "Genuine article. That's what makes it real."

Grace shuddered. "If you guys are around when I die, just… I don't know, vet the mortuary technician?"

Hotch grimaced in sympathy, but Reid didn't even appear to be listening.

"'Genuine article'," he repeated, before hastily leaving the viewing area.

Grace and Hotch followed; they could see the mental cogs turning in his head. He was onto something.

"Reid," said Hotch, as they caught up with him.

He was rummaging in his satchel for his notebook. "I took a report of a grave robbery," he said, pulling it out.

"I thought you said it was just a simple theft?" Grace said, frowning.

"Yeah, but listen to what was taken," Reid told them. "A dress, a pair of diamond earrings and a pair of pearl earrings."

"Two pairs of earrings?" Grace asked, peeking over the notebook at Reid's untidy handwriting.

"If our unsub is like Bakunas then he needs the genuine articles from the true object of his affection to complete the fantasy," Hotch realised.

"Exactly. This grave could belong to that woman." Reid reviewed his notes. "Let's see…" He froze, then looked at Grace. "Abigail Hansen," he said slowly. "Not 'an abbey', but 'Abi'."

Grace stared at him, stunned. "And if she's dead then she'd be pale. Did the custodian say what colour the dress was?"

"Yeah," said Reid, obviously creeped out. "Orange."

She nodded and turned to Hotch. "It fits what I got from the necklace."

"I'll call Garcia," he said at once.

While they waited, Reid moved a little closer. Grace made an effort not to respond. He looked good today, which didn't help, with his dark grey waistcoat and swept back hair.

 _I wish you wouldn't wear that damn purple scarf,_ Grace thought, irritably. _Particularly on a case like this. I don't need to be dealing with unwanted attraction when there's necrophilia on the table._

"A metal grille?" he murmured. "That could be an element of where he's holding her."

"Could be," Grace allowed, aware of the dangers of putting too much stock on details gleaned from psychometry.

"Do you think she's still alive?"

Grace thought about it for a moment before nodding. "I'd have got more from the necklace if she wasn't. There's a good chance – for now," she added, thinking about what five days of attempted brainwashing might do to a person's resolve. "As soon as she gives into his fantasy, though –"

"He'll kill her," Reid finished grimly.

" _The weird thing about working here is that natural deaths seem so much worse, now,"_ Garcia complained, as Hotch put his phone on the table.

"You're on speaker, Garcia," he warned, but he needn't have worried.

" _So, I got her obit from the Olympian,"_ Garcia told them, sounding sad. _"Abigail Reina Hansen, died suddenly at 26 from myocarditis, heart defect. Sending her passport photo now."_

"Well, she certainly looks the part," said Grace, turning the laptop around so Hotch and Reid could see a young, blonde woman with short hair and double pierced ears.

"Garcia, what else can you tell us about her?" Hotch asked.

" _I can tell you that she was born in Amsterdam, she never married, and her employment records show her working for Patrick and Leona Gless from 1985 until her death in 1992."_

"Can you get us an address for the Gless family?" Hotch asked. "They might be the only ones who can tell us who Abigail was."

" _Yeah."_

0o0

Patrick and Leona Gless were wealthy, sad and utterly dysfunctional. Their enormous, lake-front house was filled with beautiful things – a hangover, perhaps, from Patrick's failed career as an artist – but none of it seemed to have cheered them up. Leona made it clear from the outset that it was her money, not his. Their marriage had evidently broken down years before, though they were still living in the same house, and the husband at least was trying to pretend things were okay.

Both of them had remembered Abigail with genuine warmth – the only warmth Hotch and Rossi had seen the entire time they were at the house. They had even paid for her funeral, given that she'd had no relatives back in Holland who might.

Their son, Roderick, was obviously a bone of contention. Patrick seemed deeply saddened by his absence from their life – and defensive, when the questioning turned negative – but Leona's sadness was closer to exhaustion. She had even let the team keep the last letter he had written them, along with a photograph of Roderick and Abigail.

He was troubled, Leona had told them, but she didn't know he would ever hurt someone. Through her honest surprise at the possibility of her estranged son having done something awful, they had read that now that she thought about it, it wasn't that much of a surprise at all. Abigail's death had had an enormous impact on the nine-year-old Roderick – particularly given that he'd been alone with her corpse for several days after.

JJ gazed sadly at the picture of the woman Roderick was trying to recapture. She was wearing an orange dress, probably the one she had been buried in, smiling the smile of a young person who couldn't even comprehend her life coming to an end. The kid tucked into her side looked happy and normal, but then in her experience, most serial killers had at least one picture that looked like this.

From what Rossi had told the others (both JJ and Grace had been finding reasons to be quietly and usefully elsewhere since their earlier disagreement), Abigail had been more of a parent to Roderick than either Patrick or Leona. She had been young and beautiful. Witnessing her death and subsequently trying to get to sleep beside her had done a real number on their unsub.

" _It's exactly how they said,"_ Garcia reported. _"Roderick's trust was emptied in March '04. Half a million bucks."_

"Where is he now?" Rossi asked.

" _Sir, the thing is, he's got to be using straight cash, 'cause there's no paper trail on him for the last four years,"_ Garcia told them, frustrated. _"Nothing from the IRS or the DMV. There's no properties or utilities in his name."_

"You can't find him?" Rossi guessed.

" _I'm sorry,"_ Garcia apologised, sounding mildly distraught.

Rossi hung up.

"You know, half a million isn't what it used to be," said Morgan. "And the way this unsub is accustomed to living, after four years he would need to supplement his income."

"Anything between the lines, Reid?" Rossi asked.

The three of them turned to the Spencer, who was studying Roderick's last letter to his parents.

"Nothing that points to a specific location," he said thoughtfully. "He's basically saying that he's happy and that should be enough for her. It's essentially a goodbye letter." He folded it up.

"Enough for 'her'?" Morgan asked.

"Um," Reid clarified, rooting out the envelope. "It's only addressed to Leona."

"Why not his dad?" Morgan wondered, surprised.

JJ shrugged. "Maybe they didn't get along."

"No, that's not right," said Rossi, frowning. He got his cell phone out and called Garcia again. "Garcia, I need you to check something else," he began, walking away.

"So, basically we got nothin'," Morgan sighed and Reid nodded, looking discouraged.

JJ picked up the envelope and letter thoughtfully.

0o0

"You took it to Usher?" Emily asked, incredulous, as she, Grace and JJ peered at Roderick's last letter. "JJ, he's a total fraud," she said despairing of her optimistic friend.

"No, he's not," said Grace quietly.

Emily had to look twice at her to realise she wasn't joking.

They were in the cafeteria of the Olympia Police Department, where the relative peace of mid-shift reigned. JJ had sought them ought, presumably to get moral support before presenting Usher's suggestions to a sceptical team. She had probably bargained without Emily's scepticism, though.

"He's inserting himself into the case to get attention," she protested.

"He knew about Brooke being drugged, he knew about Henry without me telling him," said JJ. "There's nothing about that online, Will and I have been very careful about that. And he's not pushing himself forward, he's only telling us things about the case when we ask."

"A pay check, then," Emily groused.

"He was right about the dress, too," said Grace, still speaking quietly. "'The colour orange'." She motioned at the picture.

Emily felt her eyes drawn to the young woman in the frame. "Luck," she said aloud, but felt a great deal more doubtful about it than before. "You're seeing patterns after the fact."

They were both so firmly and unflappably convinced. It was unnerving.

"What did he say?" Grace asked.

"That Roderick was near water – a rocky shore," JJ shrugged at Emily. "He seemed pretty certain."

"I'll check the maps," said Grace, already walking away. She paused. "Uh, maybe don't tell Rossi right away?" she suggested, before disappearing down the stairs.

"What do you think?" JJ asked, as Emily watched her go.

"I think you've both lost your minds," she said. "But we better tell Hotch."

0o0

"What did he say?" Hotch asked.

He had the look of a man who had unexpectedly been put between a rock and a hard place.

"Water. He said Roderick was near water," JJ told him.

"That's not very specific," said Reid, sitting cross-legged on the table. "Earth is two-thirds water."

Grace hurried over. "I think we can probably narrow it down to the area in and around Olympia, based on his burial ground, the abduction sites, and the call from Brooke Lombardini," she said, with mild sarcasm.

Reid rolled his eyes at her, but it seemed to JJ he was more amused than annoyed.

Grace spread out a map she'd pinched from the back of the Police Department as Detective Fullwood looked tolerantly on. "Lot of water in Washington State…"

"He specified a rocky shoreline you could see," JJ added.

Hotch looked exasperated; he didn't seem to think much of Usher or his evidence.

"JJ…" he said. "This technique is not exactly a reliable source of information."

"Okay," she said, handing him the framed picture of Abi and Roderick. "This photo from the Gless house? It was taken at their house on Mercer Island." She showed him the label on the back.

"Waterfront property," said Fullwood, impressed.

JJ nodded hopefully at him, pleased to have someone else believe her.

"No one's lived there for ten years. It's abandoned, I checked," said JJ, with enthusiasm. "This could be where he's holding Brooke!"

There was a moment, oddly, where both Hotch and Spence looked at Grace expectantly – though later JJ thought she must have imagined it.

By the table, though she appeared to have been paying little or no attention to her colleagues, Grace pulled a face. "It's outside the area the towers indicated Brooke's call came from. And that area is largely away from open water – suburbs, industrial areas, that sort of thing."

"He's sending him money!" Rossi declared, hurrying over with paperwork.

"What's that?" Hotch asked, whirling around.

"Roderick's dad," Rossi explained. "It's the reason Roderick never said goodbye to him in the letter. They never lost contact. That supplemental income you were asking about?" he said to Morgan. "This is it. Every six months, a $50,000 wire."

"Nice one," said Grace appreciatively. She was still standing over the map. "Where to?"

"This is Western Union, though," JJ pointed out, reading the details of the transfer. "There's no way to tell who's on the receiving end."

"I'm telling you, he's sending it to Roderick," Rossi insisted. "If you'd seen his father, you'd know."

"It's true," Hotch agreed. "Deep down, he was… very guilty about neglecting him."

"He's submissive in the marriage," Rossi added. "He's probably doing it behind her back."

Morgan frowned. "You don't think his dad knew?"

Rossi shook his head. "No, I think he's a sad man, tryin' to buy his kid's love."

Fullwood joined Grace by the map, reading the address from the Western Union slip. "This western union is within the area Brooke's call originated from," he said.

"I'll go back to the Gless family," said Hotch. "Be ready."

Everybody moved off except for JJ and Grace. JJ put the letter back into the file, embarrassed and a little upset. She looked at the map Grace was studying.

"I feel like such a fool," she said softly.

"Hey, don't take it badly," said Grace. "Our faith in the evidence and our skill as behavioural analysts is what makes us good investigators."

"Yeah, but I let Usher's skills as a psychic blind me."

Grace looked at her for a moment, biting her lip as if deciding what to say. "That's what Hotch is here for," she said, at last. "You and Rossi were both working on a hunch. His panned out, yours didn't. It's Hotch's job to pick which one to go for. That doesn't mean Usher was wrong – just our interpretation."

0o0

 _For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible._

 _Stuart Chase_

0o0

They had found Brooke, just in the nick of time, in a disused facility at the heart of an industrial park in the city. Roderick had had a scalpel pressed to her jugular to begin the embalming process and if they had been even a minute later, things might have gone very badly for her. Even knowing the barbiturate he used, the paramedics had a hard time bringing her back from the drug-induced trance he had her in.

It made JJ feel a little sick, to think that if the team had gone off to Mercer Island as she had suggested, they could have lost Brooke entirely. She had been so _certain_.

Still, they hadn't, and she had been okay, and JJ had resolved never to consult psychics in a professional context again – at least without a healthy pinch of salt. Spencer, of all people, had taken a poorly framed photograph on his cell phone of the mural of the rocky coastline that had been on the building opposite Roderick's embalming suite and showed her it on the jet. A conciliatory gesture, perhaps, that maybe Usher hadn't been that far from the truth after all.

She wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that.

Perhaps Grace had been right: the interpretation was the problematic part.

Tired, because it was very early, and cold from the rain that seemed to have followed them back from Olympia to Quantico, JJ headed straight for the coffee machine when she got into the bullpen. It had been two days since they had rescued Brooke and taken her home to her ecstatic mother, and she had yet to sleep the whole night through.

Being back at the BAU was tough, even without a young baby to tend to.

"You're in early."

She turned, surprised, to find Rossi watching her, an inscrutable expression on his face.

JJ smiled. So was he – and behind him, Hotch's office light was on, which suggested he, too, was in the building somewhere, probably doing the never-ending paperwork that was the lot of a team leader.

"Couldn't sleep," she admitted.

He nodded, sympathetic. "I know how it can be, coming back here," he said. "The bad things seem worse." He paused before adding, "You want easy answers."

JJ rolled her eyes. She did not want to have this conversation today. "If you're going to tell me not to believe in psychics, you don't have to."

"You can believe in what you want," said Rossi, somehow managing to sound like the principal of JJ's old high school. "But when you're here, you need to have faith in what we do. It works."

"I just…" she trailed off, feeling the need to explain herself. She didn't want to lose her colleague's respect – especially not after having been away. "I saw a mother losing her child and – uh, I – we didn't have any other leads. I thought 'what harm could it do?'"

Rossi nodded. "I asked the same question once."

"You did?" JJ asked, surprised.

Given his attitude over the past week she would have thought he would ever had sought out that kind of help.

"It was a kidnapping case in Georgia," he told her. "We had nothing, time was running out – and there was a local woman, known for her 'abilities'. On her advice, we took the investigation in the wrong direction. The boy died."

JJ looked away, horrified. "I'm sorry," she said, appreciating the way he must feel – the way she almost had felt.

"It was a long time ago," he said, brushing it off.

"Well, we won this time," said JJ, her general optimism winning out. "That's what matters, right?"

Rossi smiled. "Welcome back."

0o0

It was still raining in Quantico. Grace walked to work in it, enjoying the feel of it. It was different from the rain in Olympia, a long-term storm front that had been flooding the drains for the better part of three weeks. This was more of a spring bluster, lifting the scent of the freshly budded leaves into the air. There were no shadows here. Instead, it was curiously refreshing.

When she got into Quantico she walked into the empty lift soaked to the skin, clicked her fingers on the way up and walked out of it rather smugly, dry and warm.

It was early, but not too early; lights were on in all the offices and a few agents were already wandering the halls, clutching files and mugs of coffee, and rubbing the sleep from their eyes. The presence of Morgan's bag beneath his desk suggested he was somewhere in the training section, yelling at cadets, which was almost a hobby for him these days, and JJ's door was already open.

Grace, who had slept well and dreamed of nothing but weather, decided to skip the morning tea round. Instead, she headed towards Rossi's office. She could see him inside, already reviewing files. She knocked on the door.

"Morning," she said, walking straight in without waiting for a response.

"Good morning," he said, assessing her.

"Foul weather we're having," she said cheerfully.

While she had come to mend any bridge she might have burnt in Washington State, she knew that neither she nor Rossi were the kind to hold grudges. They were both fairly straight-talking, in a round-about way. Already, the beginnings of an answering smile were forming on her friend's face.

"We good?" she asked, and he chuckled, amused at her brisk approach.

"Yeah, we're good."

"Good."

She turned to go, but Rossi stopped her, clearing his throat.

"You can't put your faith in con men, you know."

"I don't," she said shortly. "I have faith in what we do – but not everybody does, and their opinions also count. As long as they don't get in the way of the police work."

He gestured to the seat opposite his desk and she took it, interested in what he felt he ought to say.

"There was case in Georgia, nearly twenty years ago," he began, and told her about the death that had forever marked his opinion of psychics.

When he had finished, Grace nodded. "That's rough," she said.

"It was a long time ago."

"'Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain'*," she quoted. "Coppers' memories are long and unforgiving."

"Yes they are," he said, possibly satisfied he had maybe made an inroad into changing her attitude – or at least, that she had listened to the reasons behind his.

"But you know, there's a difference between keeping an open mind and being led down the wrong path."

"It's difficult to see which is which," he said, "when you're on the ground and getting desperate."

Grace nodded. "That's why we work as a team – we keep each other grounded."

He chuckled. "And you're okay with seeing things that you want to be there?"

It came out more confrontational than he perhaps imagined it had, but Grace let it slide. She shrugged.

"You're okay with not seeing things that you don't want. It's like Roald Dahl said, 'Those who don't believe in magic will never find it'."

He smiled and looked down at his files, accepting her opinion, if not its validity. He couldn't resist one last shot at Usher, though.

"He was some psychic," he remarked. "Everything he said was way off the mark."

Grace met his eyes with a tolerant smile.

 _I know what you're up to,_ she thought, _but there's no point baiting me. I've spent too long at this for you to get to me._

"Mmm, yeah. Totally off the mark," she mused aloud. "Building number 768 in the industrial estate, surrounded by fences, bottles of orange chemicals all over, Brooke in Abi's orange dress, a mural of a rocky shoreline outside. How could anyone possibly trust in information like that?"

Rossi narrowed his eyes. "You're matrixing."

"And you're in denial."

They looked at one another for a moment, before smiling, content in the knowledge that neither one was going to change the other's mind any time soon. But that was okay. Friendship wasn't about everyone thinking the same way, after all – it was about enjoying people's differences.

"The important thing is," said Grace, "there are no easy answers – and everything gets double and triple checked."

"Agreed." He paused and then fixed her with a mischievous, penetrating stare. "Maybe I should check into your old cases – see what psychic managed to convince you to believe in them."

It was meant in jest – that much was obvious from his body language – a peace offering kind of joke, certainly not intended as the threat it sort of felt like. It was her turn to look down at his desk.

"Maybe you shouldn't," she said, lightly enough, but he frowned, catching edge of something hidden in _her_ body language.

Now Rossi was looking at her like she was at the other side of an interrogation table, but Grace held her ground. There was still that handy moratoria on inter-team profiling, and she knew he trusted her as an agent, at least.

"No?" he asked, watching her closely.

She smiled slightly. "Everybody's got a past, Rossi. Even you. Most of us want it to stay there."

0o0

 ***One of Edna St Vincent Millay's sonnets about grief.**


	10. Zoe's Reprise

**Just a quick notice – there won't be a chapter next week because I'm a guest speaker at Sci-Fi Weekender 9 in Pwhelli, and there's a lot to do beforehand. So, if – by some miracle – you happen to also be heading to Wales for GeekCamp, drop by the panel I'm participating in after lunch on the Friday and say hi : )**

 **Have a good week!**

 **Pxx**

 **0o0**

 **Essential Listening: So Cold, by Ben Cocks**

 **0o0**

"'Dahmer, Lake and Ng, DeBardeleben, Berdella and others. At the core of these criminals is a need for control'," Dave read aloud, conscious that each person in the room was hanging on his every word. "'Killing was an act that provided a release so sexually satisfying that they were compelled to repeat the fantasy with multiple victims, again and again. It is this continuum of violence that we will explore in _Deviance: The Secret Desires of Sadistic Serial Killers_.'"

Applause filled the brightly lit, tastefully modern bookshop in which he and the rest of them had spent the evening, part of the tour his publicist had arranged. Part of him wondered whether he should worry that the only reason he took AL any more was to promote his books, rather than enjoy himself. But then, retirement hadn't suited him, and most of the people he wanted to spend time with had gone their separate ways. Dave met the eyes of the bookshop owner who was running the event over the heads of her patrons. She was a pleasant woman, Theresa, and attractive. They had worked together before.

"Signed copies of Special Agent David Rossi's tenth anniversary edition of his best-selling book are on sale tonight," she announced, effectively bringing the performance part of the evening to a close.

Or at least, the speaking to a crowd part. Dave had discovered early on in his writing career that the people who came to these things didn't want to see the person who had written the books they loved, so much as the person they had an image of in their minds. It was a performance, really.

Most people bought books, though some had had them already – and almost all of them wanted them signed. They formed an orderly line of interested people and Dave spoke a few words to them all, writing personal messages in each book. It was always a little exhausting, keeping up appearances like this. They were all so earnest in their slightly morbid enthusiasm.

The one in front of him now was a real armchair thrill-seeker.

"I find your career so _fascinating_ ," she gushed. "What's it like to interview serial killers?"

"Well, it's never boring," he replied, diplomatically.

What was it Pearce was always saying? 'The truth, but none of the detail'.

"Is that what you enjoy most about your work?" asked another fan – likely to be the woman's friend or partner by the way they were standing. "Looking evil right in the eye?"

"No," said Dave, tolerantly, signing his book for him. "It's putting killers in jail."

"You know, what gets me are the wives who swear they had no clue their husband was a serial killer," said the woman.

Internally, Dave sighed. It was never that easy.

"How can you be married to one and not know?" her partner agreed.

Rather than engage with this rather narrow-minded and simplistic view of human nature, he turned to the owner of the bookshop. "Theresa, would you mind calling up my car service?"

"Not at all," she said, with understanding.

"Uh, you'll excuse me?" he said to the enthusiasts.

"Sure!"

They left, satisfied, and Dave pondered the imaginations of people who didn't do something as emotionally punishing as him and his team every day. Everything was simple for them – black and white. Good and evil.

As he was making his way towards the door, one last fan came to speak to him. She had waited until the very end to catch him, hanging back from the others, possibly out of shyness, but while he admired her tenacity, it was the end of a very long day in the middle of his tenth anniversary tour, and all he wanted to do was get back to his hotel, grab a drink and go to sleep.

"Agent Rossi?" she began, tipping over a chair in her hurry to get to him before he made it outside. "Hi – oh no," she said, and put the chair back. "Hi, I'm a big fan."

Rossi smiled. This one was young and enthusiastic – and, from the notebook she was carrying, probably a student.

"Um, there's not going to be a quiz – I saw you taking notes," he joked, and she laughed a little nervously.

"Oh no, it's just for my own edification," she explained unnecessarily, continuing after him. "Agent Rossi, are you or anyone in your department investigating the recent spike in homicides in Cleveland?"

"Uh, not that I'm aware of," he replied, one eye on the sidewalk where his car was due to pull up.

He tried to leave again, but she kept on.

"There's been an uptick in homicides by eleven percent this quarter. The average uptick hasn't surpassed five percent in the past ten years in Cleveland."

Dave smiled. She reminded him of Reid – and maybe she'd make a good investigator one day – but his bed was calling and he had had enough of well-meaning members of the public, so he mustered polite interest for her, but nothing more.

"I'm guessing you're studying criminology," he said, reading her like a book.

She beamed, delighted that he had discerned that from her work. "I am." Her face became more serious in an instant, however. "Sir, I think there's a serial killer here."

He looked at her for a moment.

 _Ah, the enthusiasm of the young…_

"Well, have the police issued a statement to corroborate that?" he asked.

"I filed an inquiry downtown. Um… nobody's called me back," she told him, almost desperately, aware that he was unlikely to take her seriously if the police weren't either. "But, um, I know that the coroner's office hasn't been this busy since, the Butcher of Kingsbury Run in the 1930s."

"Well, what kind of homicides are we talking about here?" he asked, and she immediately sensed that he was interested enough to listen – until his car arrived, at least.

"Okay," she said, scrabbling in her notebook for the right page. "A man was shot in a park. A prostitute was found with her throat slashed."

 _Not connected,_ he thought, and saw his car arrive. He headed outside and the young woman followed him, still listing the disparate murders she felt meant they had a serial killer in their midst.

"A couple was shot in their car. A woman was killed in a burglary…"

"Do you know what three things profilers look at to link serial crimes?" he asked her, as she hurried to catch up.

"Victimology, modus operandi and signature," she answered promptly, as if she was in a class and her teacher had set her a test.

"Good. So, are the victims similar?"

"No."

"Was the MO consistent?"

"No…" she said again, her face falling.

"Was the signature consistent?"

"Not that I know of." she said, clearly crestfallen.

"Then there's no obvious reason to suggest that this spike in violence was due to a serial killer," he told her.

He met Theresa's eyes over the young woman's shoulder to signal his goodbye; she gave him a smile that said 'not bad – let her down gently'. It said other things, too, but they were less to do with the young fan and more to do with them.

"I see your point, sir, but I really –" the young woman said, as he made for the car.

He turned again, smiling encouragingly. "You're bright. You obviously have a passion for this, and the Bureau is always looking for good people," he told her and gavevher his card. "So, if you get a reply from the police, or even for career advice, I'm available."

She took it, though she still looked crestfallen. "Okay, thanks," she called, as his driver closed the door behind him. "It was an honour to meet you."

He rolled down the window. After all, she seemed like a good person – and she would already make a halfway decent agent.

"Keep studying," he told her. "And don't stop until you find all the answers you're looking for."

"I won't," she said quietly, and he believed her.

He gave the nod to the driver and they pulled away. Dave closed his eyes and rested his head against the seat, relieved.

"Long day?" The driver asked, meeting his eyes in the rear view mirror.

"Long life," Dave replied, and they both chuckled.

0o0

Dave had just finished packing. His flight wasn't due for a few hours, and he felt like taking a stroll – perhaps back to the bookshop. He smiled, picking up the card that had been slipped into his schedule: _'Theresa, 216 555 3204'_. Perhaps she would like a coffee.

Before he could call her, however, his cell phone rang. He picked it up, hoping it was Theresa. One glance at the number told him he would have no such luck – it had a law enforcement prefix.

"Agent Rossi."

" _Good morning, uh my name is Officer Harman. Are you still at the Providence Hotel in Cleveland?"_

Dave was seized by a sense of foreboding.

"Yes…"

" _Then I'm afraid we'll need to speak to you in connection with a homicide. I'm in the lobby downstairs."_

"I'll be right down."

He hung up and met his own eyes in the glass that hung above the desk. He had made few friends in Cleveland – he'd only been in town two days – and that narrowed the victim pool to people he had interacted closely with, or the local police would wait until he was back at Quantico.

Anxious, he grabbed his jacket and made for the door.

0o0

Officer Harman had escorted him politely into a squad car (though not into the back, which was a good sign) and then out into the suburbs, where presumably the homicide he had a connection to was situated. To his immense relief they were heading in the opposite direction to the book shop, which ruled out Theresa, who had an apartment above the shop.

His escort was taciturn, but not unfriendly, and though he couldn't get anything out of him about where they were going, he made polite conversation about the fate of various Ohio sports teams until the officer pulled up outside an ordinary looking house on a street Dave had never been to before.

"Through here, please, sir," he said, lifting the ubiquitous crime scene tape and indicating a side gate into the property's back yard.

Dave followed the officer into an area full of police milling around and forensic technicians shooing them out of the way. At the centre of it all was a yellow plastic sheet, incongruously bright in the middle of the scrubby lawn. Over it, almost as if he were guarding it, was a heavyset man in his forties, wearing the combination of cheap suit and great coat that spelled 'detective' the world over.

"Agent Rossi?" he asked, spotting him. He held out a hand for him to shake.

 _So I'm not a suspect,_ he thought. _Yet._

"I'm Detective Dan Brady. We found your card on the victim." He showed him the card, now protected in an evidence bag.

Dave's mind went back to the enthusiastic young woman who thought she'd found a serial killer.

 _Oh no._

The detective peeled back the sheet and Dave's worst fears were concerned. There, sprawled on the grass and dead leaves, was the young woman from the night before, blood trickling from a wound to her right temple. Someone had closed her eyes, at least. Seeing them devoid of the spirit he had observed only hours before would have been too much.

"Any idea what happened here?" the detective asked.

Rossi, through the fog of shock, shook his head.

The detective nodded and signalled for the coroner to lift the body, now its shock value had been used. Dave guessed that Brady had been hoping for a reaction that divined his guilt, one way or the other. He seemed to have decided in Dave's favour.

"She was found by a woman walking her dog this morning," he said, gently removing the evidence bag from Dave's unresisting fingers. "Dog wouldn't stop barking."

Dave swallowed. It was harder when there was a connection, however fleeting.

"I just talked to her last night," he told Brady, dismayed. "I never asked her name."

"Zoe Hawkes," Brady told him, checking the contents of one of the other bags. "That's her car right there." He pointed to an older model blue car parked along the sidewalk. "These keys were still in her pocket. Car alarm was still activated. There was no sign of a break-in."

Dave frowned, staring at the keys – and then at the other things they had found on Zoe's corpse. His training and years of experience were beginning to stir, muffled as they had been by the shock of it.

"She had pepper spray, but didn't use it?" he asked, confused.

"I don't know," said Brady, looking at the slim canister attached to the car keys. "Maybe she didn't get the chance."

They moved out of the way to let the trolley with her body pass them.

"Nobody saw or heard anything?" Dave asked.

"No. we went door to door," Brady told him. "There were no witnesses. There was blunt force trauma to her head, signs of strangulation. Murderer asphyxiated her with the scarf she was wearing." He sighed. "Do you have any idea what she was doing snooping around this case?"

Dave frowned.

 _Case?_

"You keep talking like I know something," he said aloud. "What case?"

Brady stared at him for a moment, evidently surprised. "The resident of this house, Kayla James, was murdered and raped three days ago in a burglary-homicide."

 _She thought there was a serial killer in Cleveland,_ Dave thought, glancing at the house. _And I gave her the brush off_

 _And told her not to stop looking._

0o0

 _I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn._

 _Albert Einstein_

0o0

Penelope Garcia didn't often invite people into her lair, but there were a few people she would make exceptions for – and a few occasions. Like this.

She watched, happily, as JJ turned the page of the photograph album.

"This is Henry wearing the booties my mom knitted him," she said.

"I can't get over his cuteness!" Penelope cooed and JJ laughed.

"Oh, and this is him wearing the customised leather jacket auntie Penelope got him."

Morgan, who was peering over JJ's other shoulder, chuckled.

"When he grows up he's gonna be a rebel," Penelope insisted and the others both snorted.

Her phone rang and she answered on her headset so they could all hear, one glance at the number telling her all she needed to know.

"Is this David Rossi?" she asked cheerfully. "The famous, best-selling author David Rossi?"

"What're you doin'?" Morgan asked. "You're not supposed to be callin' when you're on Annual Leave."

They heard him sigh and all three of them tensed for trouble.

" _I think my AL just ended."_

Morgan frowned. "What do you mean?"

" _Garcia, Cleveland police is sending you some files. Get JJ to distribute them right away,"_ said Rossi, without further explanation.

"Yeah," she said, and set to work immediately.

"What're we lookin' at?" JJ asked, the photo album already stowed beneath Penelope's desk for safe-keeping.

" _I don't know yet,"_ said Rossi. _"Just see if the team can find a connection with these crimes. I'll call you back in a few hours."_

"Yes sir," said JJ.

He hung up and they shared a look.

"I'll go round up the others," said JJ, departing.

Morgan nodded. "And I'll call Pearce."

"She's on AL too," Penelope reminded him.

"I know." Morgan agreed. "But if it's important enough to bring Rossi back in, soundin' the way he just sounded, then it's important enough to bring everyone in."

0o0

He had attended the notification, partly out of guilt for his part of having sent her down the path that had led to her death, and partly out of respect for a young woman who may have still been a student, but was already – as far as Rossi was now concerned – a member of the wider law enforcement community.

She was one of them, even if she had only been at the beginning of things.

 _And I gave her the brush off_ , he thought, looking around glumly.

Her room, which her distraught mother had willingly let him see, was that curious mix of child and adult you got from a person straddling the two worlds as a student living at home. There were photographs of her course mates and old school friends pinned to the walls, her old stuffed toys in odd places, half-forgotten but not yet cast away, and a bookcase full of textbooks.

Not just textbooks, he realised, moving closer to look. He sighed. Zoe had bought every one of his books, and from the looks of the scraps of paper that bristled at the top of each one, read them cover to cover. And taken notes.

Here, more than any crime scene he had attended since his return to the BAU, was that crushing sense of a promising future ripped away.

Her mother, Sheila, had told him he had been Zoe's hero.

 _Some hero I turned out to be,_ he thought, eyeing the rafts of meticulous notes. _I wouldn't even listen._

Her laptop, which had a pink flower stuck on the back, looked particularly incongruous among all the criminology books. He opened it, sadly.

 _I won't let you down again_ , he promised.

0o0

Grace hurried through the bullpen towards the situation room. She had been at a farm shop out in the sticks when she got the call from Morgan, and was still in her civvies. It felt intensely wrong not to be wearing a suit, as if she had somehow turned up to a battle carrying a stuffed rabbit instead of a shield.

Still, all hands on deck meant just that, and if Morgan was right about Rossi's tone of voice, this wasn't one she was prepared to duck out of, no matter what else was going on.

"Hey, what did I miss?"

The team were already in the situation room, clustered around the table, files spread out all over. The sight of it steadied her, even when Morgan sent an amused look at her clothes. Hotch and Reid moved their coffees out of the way to make space for her.

"Not much," said Emily. "Just got started."

"The crimes are within a seven-mile radius," said JJ, as Grace thumbed through the file in front of her.

"Well, that's something," Morgan mused.

"Yeah, but the neighbourhoods are all completely different," Emily responded. "They range from poor to rich, industrial to residential."

"They don't make much of a pattern," Grace agreed.

"The physical locations are dissimilar," Hotch countered, "but the operating zone's well-defined."

Garcia, who had brought her laptop to the table in order to remotely access Zoe's computer, glanced up. "Okay, I'm in."

" _I see you,"_ said Rossi, from the other side of the conference phone.

"Opening her web browser for a search history…" Garcia told them. She raised an eyebrow. "Check out her home page."

Emily leaned over to take a look. "Alright, so the first thing she looks at when she opens her computer is a crime column," she said, for the benefit of the others.

"Probably to stay current on her studies," Morgan reflected.

Across the table, Emily made a sound of agreement.

" _Can you see what she worked on last?"_ Rossi requested.

Garcia hit some keys and said, "Voila. These are the most recently opened documents she created."

Reid leaned in on Garcia's other side, frowning in concentration. "It looks like she was compiling empirical data about homicide trends in Cleveland."

"Do you think she knew the killer?" Emily suggested.

There was a pause. _"I don't see any notes indicating suspects."_

"Well, Dave, she's a criminology student," Hotch reasoned. "She's been taught to analyse statistics and apply theory, not investigate killers. Let's talk about what we know."

"Alright, victim one, Travis Bartlett, was last seen at a gay bar," JJ summarised, bringing up the man's photo. "He was shot at night in a park." She clicked her pointer again. "Victim two, Lily Nicks, a thirty-four year old prostitute. Her throat was slashed. Victims three and four," – another click – "June Appleby and Troy Wertsler, were shot in their car at a parking lot outside of a movie theatre. And victim five was a twenty-eight year old woman, Kayla James." She clicked the pointer a final time. "Killed in her home. She was bound, suffocated with a bag over her head, evidence of rape."

"And then, the sixth victim is Zoe," Emily added.

"Victimology, weapons used and COD are all different," Reid pointed out. "I mean, it's hard to imagine it's even the same unsub."

"It can't be a coincidence that Zoe goes to Kayla James' house and gets murdered," Rossi insisted.

"Alright, let's say it is the same killer," said Hotch. "Does anybody see a pattern?"

"Well, maybe…" Emily spoke up, chewing the end of her pen. "Okay, in the first crime, he shoots the victim. The second crime, he rapes a woman and slashes her throat, that's more personal. In the third crime, he escalates to killing two people. In the fourth, he escalates even more by raping a woman, binding her and suffocating her."

"So if it is the same unsub, you could argue that there's a progression of violence with every kill," Hotch said, following her line of thought.

"It could be an anger-excitation offender, getting more daring with each crime," Reid proposed, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"I think I got somethin' here," Morgan added. "Look at this." He held up Lily Nicks' autopsy photo. "The slashes in the prostitute's throat, they're all shallow, unsure cuts. The Kayla James crime scene –" He switched photo – "telephone cord, rope and duct tape were used. It's like he couldn't decide how to bind her."

"So, without a gun, he's sloppy, inexperienced," Hotch surmised.

"The young couple shot in the car," Morgan continued, picking up their crime scene photo. "That scene remind you of anything?"

"Yeah, they were shot with a .44 Bulldog, just like the Son of Sam used on his victims," Reid said immediately. "Which were also young couples in parked cars. It might be nothing, but you're right, there is a parallel there."

"With the second victim it's hard not to think of Jack the Ripper," Emily supplied, looking uneasy. "The obvious similarity being it's a prostitute whose throat was slashed."

Grace nodded. "The only thing missing is the post mortem mutilation, but given how shallow the cuts were, perhaps he didn't have the stomach for it."

"You know, you don't have a monopoly on Jack the Ripper just because you're British," Reid joked, in her direction.

Grace rolled her eyes at him in tolerant amusement. "Feeling territorial?"

" _Stop arguing!"_ Rossi snapped, pulling them both up short. _"Put your petty differences aside, for cryin' out loud! I need you two focused."_

"Uh…" said Reid, staring around the room and then at Grace.

"No one's arguing here," she said slowly, frowning.

"Yeah, man, we were just talking through the profile," said Reid.

There was a long, pregnant pause as every agent around the table shared worried looks. It wasn't like Rossi to snap at people, or overreact. This one was plainly getting to him.

"Kayla James was bound, tortured, raped – with a plastic bag over her head," said Hotch, at last, calling the room back to order. "Like BTK."

"And what about victim number one?" Morgan prompted.

Rossi seemed to have recovered himself a little. _"Garcia, what neighbourhood was he found in?"_

"At a park in the Kingsbury Run area," she replied.

" _Zoe reminded me last night that Cleveland's most famous serial killer was the Butcher of Kingsbury Run,"_ Rossi told them. _"He found his victims in gay bars, shot them and dumped their bodies there. Travis Bartlett was last seen at a gay bar and his body was found in Kingsbury Park."_

"So, these are copycats of famous serial killers?" JJ asked, as the shock settled around the room.

"It's like a serial killer hall of fame," Grace remarked. "He's what – collecting famous murders?"

" _He's a serial killer studying serial killers,"_ Rossi realised.

"There's no way Cleveland PD could have put these together on their own," Grace reflected. "The link between the MOs and signature is too meta."

"He's experimenting," Reid guessed. "Trying to find the thing he gets off on."

Grace nodded sourly. "'Standing on the shoulders of giants'."

Hotch nodded, brow deeply creased. "See you in Cleveland, Dave."


	11. Lost Girls

**Back on the case, folks. Sorry for the break! Over the last few weeks we've had two weddings, a funeral and a major breakup in the wider family, on top of working two jobs and trying to make sure the show goes smoothly! Should be back to normal now. Thanks for your immense patience!**

 **Pxx**

 **0o0**

 **Essential listening: Stand by Me, by Oasis**

 **0o0**

The agents swarmed into the East Cleveland Homicide Department, ready to get the ball rolling, and Rossi was already waiting for them.

"Guys," he said, by way of greeting.

Derek nodded at him, reflecting that it was odd to see him out of his usual smart suit – and looking so tense.

"Hey Dave," said Hotch.

"We're in that room," he said briskly, indicating a meeting room put aside for their use. "Coffee's brewing."

"I'll get started on the evidence boards," Reid said, carrying a box of files past.

Pearce was right behind him. "I'll do the map."

"Detective Brady's our point – I'll let you all introduce yourselves," said Rossi.

Derek followed the others into the meeting room, which was the standard four walls, tables and some chairs the majority of modern police stations had for outside consultants. It didn't escape his notice that Rossi and JJ had hung back for a brief, private conversation, but he let it go. Whatever was wigging Rossi out on this one, maybe JJ could help put his mind at ease.

A heavy-set detective came in, looking mildly harassed but pleased to see them, nonetheless. "Detective Brady," he said, shaking Hotch's hand.

"Aaron Hotchner. These are Agents Prentiss, Morgan, Pearce and Doctor Reid."

"Pleasure to meet you," he said, shaking hands with everyone but Reid. "You know, despite the circumstances and all."

Derek nodded. "We get that a lot," he said, with a sideways smile.

"I know you've not been on this long," said the detective, getting down to business. "But what do you make of this copycat thing? I thought that was mostly TV hype, you know?"

"I know it might seem far-fetched," said Hotch. "Copycat killers are not entirely uncommon."

"This one happens to be copying several different killers," Derek added.

"But if he's tryin' to be the Butcher of Kingsbury Run, why didn't he cut up and mutilate the victims, like the real guy?" Brady asked, in the manner of someone not entirely buying it.

"No, that was seven weeks ago," said Prentiss, who was helping Reid fix evidence to the board. "He was just getting started. Beginning killers are often frightened of the crime itself. They're more interested in getting it over with as quickly as possible and fleeing the scene."

"That level of mutilation is something he needed to work up to," Grace supplied, unrolling a map for the other board. "But we may not see it at all – he's copied two killers who mutilate now and not gone to that particular extreme in either instance."

"Why's that?" Brady asked.

"Apart from squeamishness, it probably doesn't get him off in the same way," Grace expanded. "He's copying the method, but he can't escape his own psychology or proclivities."

"He was just usin' the butcher's ruse as a way to lure the victim to be alone with him," Morgan told the detective.

"By the time he killed Kayla James three days ago, he'd progressed. He came very close to copying all the BTK's MO," said Prentiss.

"He's reading, learning and borrowing from others because he doesn't know who he is yet," Reid continued.

Morgan nodded. "And because of this, we think he's young and impressionable. Maybe even a student."

"Someone probably enrolled in criminology classes," said Reid.

"At the very least he could be borrowing criminology texts from the local libraries or have a payment history of purchasing them," Grace put in.

"Our technical analyst is going through names of local students and liaising with the major local libraries for their borrowing lists right now," Reid went on.

Hotch nodded at the board. "Up to this point, changing his MO has prevented investigators from linking the crimes. That's why we need to work quickly."

Brady gave him a look that said he had gone along with this so far because Rossi was bringing in more resources, but now he was beginning to believe in the slightly mad sounding theory they had brought to the table, and – based on how convinced these agents were – that he really might have a serial killer on his patch. "You're sure about this?"

"Absolutely" Grace replied.

"It's not a coincidence that all of these random, violent murders in a localised area are copycats of serial killers," Prentiss said.

"It's as if all the worst serial killers had converged on Cleveland," Hotch went on. "Every time he plans to kill, the murder weapon, the MO and the victimology will all change."

 _Like a kind of serial killer roulette wheel,_ Derek reflected, as Brady questioned his colleagues further. _And the house always wins._

0o0

Prentiss swirled the coffee in her cup thoughtfully, willing the person on the other end of the phone – an administrative creature from the local counsel – to either find what she needed to know or pick better hold music. If she was on this call much longer she'd have to raid Morgan's man-bag for an Advil. She nodded at Hotch as he came out of the situation room and found Detective Brady, who was on the phone.

"Detective, will you let your team know we're ready to give a preliminary profile?"

"Sure," said Brady, then spoke into the phone. "I've got to go."

"Thanks," said Hotch, as the other man hung up.

Rossi came over, looking uncomfortable. "Hotch, I'm gonna… step out for this one. Clear my head."

Emily raised an eyebrow. That was most unlike Rossi – but then, this case did seem to be pushing his buttons somewhat.

"Okay…" Hotch frowned and watched him go.

Emily, stuck in telephonic hell, continued to observe as JJ came over with a few files. "Garcia found three male students enrolled in criminology classes with felony records."

"Good, we'll interview them," said Hotch, taking the files.

"I don't think we need to," JJ told him heavily. "One of them is studying abroad, the other two are back in jail on other charges."

Emily made a sound of discouragement.

Hotch nodded thoughtfully. "Tell Garcia to check enrolment in online and correspondence courses. See if we have any luck with those parameters."

"Alright," said JJ, hurrying off.

For a moment, Emily thought Hotch was going to head into the situation room where the others were preparing for the profile, but his eyes were on something at the opposite end of the room. Emily followed his gaze and managed to catch a glimpse of Rossi disappearing out of the front door, something clutched in his hand. She turned back in time to see Hotch roll his eyes and stick his head around the door of the meeting room everyone was gathered in.

Deciding that she could call the guy on the other end of the phone back, when something wasn't so obviously up with her guys, Emily abandoned the phone and hurried over in time to see Hotch put down the file JJ had gave him.

"Can you guys handle the profile?" he asked.

"Yeah, everything okay?" Morgan asked, unconcerned.

"Everything's fine," Hotch assured them over his shoulder, already walking away.

The rest of the team exchanged glances, but it wasn't as if things didn't crop up during an investigation. That was probably why no one remarked on Rossi's absence, though one or two of them did glance at the space on the board where Zoe's picture had been.

 _He must have taken it with him,_ thought Emily, perplexed. _But why?_

"C'mon, let's get this thing goin'," said Morgan, leading them out to the room the department was gathering in.

"Okay guys, listen up," said Detective Brady, when they were all assembled. "This guy's been flying under the radar for weeks – now we know he's there, these folks are gonna help us get the jump on him."

He took a seat at the front of the room and gave the team the nod to get started.

"We have six homicides in a seven-mile radius in East Cleveland," said Morgan, taking point. "Now, this small zone indicates that he's a geographically stable offender."

"This type of offender is characterised as young, socially immature, of average intelligence, with psychopathic personality traits," Emily continued.

"They also usually live alone and have an antisocial nature," Morgan added.

"A serial killer's first murder is very telling," Reid told the room. "This unsub's first murder, he chose the MO of Cleveland's own Butcher of Kingsbury Run."

"The Butcher isn't as well-known as other famous serial killers, but he is a local legend," Emily explained.

"And because he picked the Butcher to be first, we believe he's a native of Cleveland and probably grew up hearing stories of the Butcher," Morgan expanded.

"This is likely where his fascination with serial killers began," said Pearce. "These stories fill people with fear and awe, and he probably wants that legacy for himself."

"This is someone who is obsessed with serial killers," Emily went on. "His computer will be filled with research on them."

"He'll have abundant images of murderers on his computer and possibly even snuff films," Reid advised. "He uses these like pornography. They… provide some sort of sexual release."

"Because of the immaturity of his first kill and the way he has developed with each victim, we believe he is a student, likely participating in an online or correspondence course," Grace continued. "His house will be filled with materials you would expect to see from a student of criminology – textbooks, articles, documentaries. He's meticulous in his copying of these crimes, so these materials will have been pored over time and again – and will bear the marks of extended study."

"He has evaded detection so far because he switches his MO each time, but we know from the complexity of his crimes he is taking a murder kit with him each time," Emily told them. "The contents may differ, but they will include a weapon, possibly some kind of restraint, and items that can be used as a forensic countermeasure, like gloves."

Morgan nodded. "This guy is just getting warmed up, so let's catch him before he has a chance to hit his stride."

0o0

Aaron hurried out of the front door of the East Cleveland Police Department and jogged down the stairs, hoping to catch Dave before he had a chance to do anything that might jeopardise the mission – or him. He spotted his old friend outside, staring at the picture of Zoe, sitting on a bench. Aaron considered him for a moment, reading how much this was affecting him, before taking a seat beside him.

Dave looked up, acknowledging and accepting Aaron's presence.

"I think he went back to relive his crime," Dave said quietly. "When Zoe showed up, she became a victim of opportunity."

"That's the same theory we arrived at on the plane," Aaron told him. "He strangled her with her own scarf. He didn't plan it. I think she surprised him."

Dave nodded inscrutably. Then: "I told her not to stop until she found the answers she was looking for." He gave a hollow chuckle at his own expense. "I didn't think she would go to a crime scene."

Aaron nodded, understanding why he felt so responsible. Still, it wasn't something that could have been avoided.

"Her mom said it's something that she does all the time," he reminded him. "She probably would have gone anyway."

"But it's because of what _I_ said that she was encouraged to go there last night," Dave insisted.

"Dave, what are you doing?" Aaron asked, concerned about the direction his friend was heading. He needed to take a step back and examine his own motives before he got too deeply entrenched here. No one could think straight when they were drowning in guilt – it clouded the mind.

"She came to me and I dismissed her," Dave argued.

"Try not to personalise it," his friend advised, though he knew from experience that was easier said than done.

Dave gave him a Look. "I was the last one she talked to before she was murdered. How is this not personal, Aaron?"

"Okay," he said, after a moment. "It's personal. That doesn't change how we go about finding her killer."

Dave looked away, so Aaron leaned closer, trying to engage him. "We know that violent criminals develop a signature over a series of crimes. If he's young, he probably hasn't even figured out what his is yet."

To his relief, Dave nodded, getting himself together. "Find the signature, we can link the crimes."

"He's probably monitoring the news, seeing if the police have connected them yet," Aaron suggested. "We can use that, we can utilise the media."

Dave agreed. "And I think I know who we can talk to."

0o0

Paula McConnell, veteran crime reporter for the Cleveland Tribune gave the impression of a tough, intelligent woman used to analysing lies in much the same way as they were. She had still been in the office when JJ had called and now she was giving her and Rossi an appraising look from behind her desk. Paula was smoking, wearing a red blouse and red lipstick. There was a full ashtray atop a pile of files on her untidy desk. She could have been a gumshoe out of a film noir – except that she was female and a reporter – and damn good at it, from what JJ had read on the drive over. She gave the impression of someone who was aware that image matters in a media career and how to use it, but also (JJ noted) someone who was wearing slacks and flat, comfortable shoes beneath her desk. It hadn't taken long to get an appointment with her, given her interests and their credentials, and while she seemed a little cynical and offhand, it was clear she was interested.

"I knew homicides were up, but nobody said anything about a serial killer," she said, immediately intrigued. "Why do I get a visit from the BAU?"

"You're Paula McConnell, Cleveland's number one source in crime news," said JJ, pitching it at just the right level of flattery to keep the woman's interest. She wasn't fooled, of course, but it helped to keep a person on side, nonetheless. "You're detailed, you have a following. He's reading you."

That surprised her, but she said nothing, letting them talk as trails of smoke collected in lazy spirals above her head.

"We need you to write that the police have found his signature," Rossi told her.

JJ added, "You can help us by explaining what a signature is in your article."

"It's a killer's persona stamp, his distinctive touch that he leaves at the scene of every crime," Rossi began to explain, but paused on McConnell's expression.

She levelled a sardonic look at the senior agent. "Well, I've been doin' this for eighteen years. I know what a signature is, honey."

"We just really need you to be detailed about this," said JJ, as McConnell made some brief notes. "We're speaking directly to him."

"Through _my_ column?" she double checked, still surprised that they might think this guy was reading it.

"He's doing something, a behavioural impulse he feels compelled to do, but a need-driven act to get a sexual release that's specific to his psyche," Rossi said.

"This repetitive behaviour at each crime scene will lead us to him."

"Let me take a stab at it," said McConnell.

JJ answered her cell, apologising with her body language. "Yeah, Reid? Okay." She coughed when she hung up and looked at Rossi. "They just found another body."

0o0

Morgan, Reid and Grace jogged down the hill beside a canal towards the hive of activity on the bank, where a body had been found in the water at the bottom. The kind of place that would be a pleasant walk on a summer's day, but it was nearly 11pm by now, and dark and cold. It was a sad scene to come upon, even when one was expecting it.

"They're bringing him up now," said Brady, directing the three BAU agents towards where the EMTs were stretchering up the body. "Teenagers found him a little over an hour ago."

They watched as the EMTs lowered him to the ground, still secured to the stretcher. He was dressed for exercise, which explained what he was doing out of doors in such a remote place.

"Is this a local jogging route?" Grace asked.

"Yeah," said Brady, with a sigh. "Secluded, not well lit… We mostly get calls about kids drinkin' down this way."

Reid switched on his torch, shining it in the dead man's face. "There's petechiae in the whites of his eyes." He moved the angle of the torch to get a better look at his neck. "Judging from the bruising, he was probably strangled with a wire."

Brady looked at them. "Is this our guy?"

"It's gotta be," Morgan reasoned. "A jogger doesn't get garrotted every day."

"Whatever signature he may have left was probably washed away in the water," Reid mused.

"Well, who's he mimicking now?" Brady asked, as Morgan and Grace crouched close to the victim to get a better look.

"Bike path rapist, Altemio Sanchez comes to mind," suggested their walking encyclopaedia, studying the scene. "He trolled bike paths near Buffalo, garrotting his victims. It looks like he copied everything except for the rape."

"Likely heterosexual," Grace observed. "Is it just me or is his choice of copycat beginning to focus on an up close and personal approach?"

"Strangulation's a repetition of his last murder with Zoe," Morgan considered. "First time he's repeated himself."

"Yeah, Zoe's murder was spontaneous, though. He didn't plan it," Reid reminded them. "He acted on instinct and did what came naturally to him."

"I guess he liked how that felt," Grace mused, standing up. "Maybe in killing Zoe he found something that resonated with his psyche."

"Yeah," Reid nodded. "If he's starting to repeat a pattern, he may have found himself."

0o0

Grace rolled over and turned the alarm on her mobile off, before sinking back into the hotel bed, an arm slung across her eyes.

She, Morgan and Reid had been at the scene the night before until after 1 a.m., and on top of that, a 6.30 wake-up call was a bit of a drain on the system. She sighed and glanced over at the crack in the curtains. It was obviously still dark outside, and the dull, sickly orange of the streetlights was spilling into the room, illuminating a triangle of the chair she had dumped her clothes on.

It was a strange kind of life, she reflected, constantly moving around the country, never being at home for more than seven days at a stretch – and then only when she was on leave.

It was a little exhausting.

The alternative, though, spending hours alone in an empty house every evening and weekend, would have been worse. She suspected that would have driven her mad by now, as much as she loved her home and garden. There were some things that were just too loud to drown out when you were on your own for long stretches of time. At least with the BAU you got company and a mind-bending series of puzzles to occupy your time.

 _It would have been better today, though,_ she thought. _Then I wouldn't have to deal with people._

Grace sat up and ran a hand through her unruly hair, wondering whether she shouldn't just get it all cut off to make life easier. She was aware she ought to shower and read through the case notes before meeting the others for a flying breakfast in the hotel restaurant, but right now, she couldn't summon much enthusiasm for any of it.

She didn't even feel particularly invested in the case – though of course she was doing her best.

Ideally, she would have been back home, somewhere around Stafford, where she knew any number of places a woman could quietly be – she'd made sure to book the leave six months in advance. But as soon as Rossi had called them in, effectively cancelling his own leave, she had killed hers, too, hoping they would be back in time. Sadly, serial killers were as unhelpful as ever with their timing.

Still, it was a good thing being a part of the kind of team that was there for each other when they needed it. Even when it was inconvenient.

Grace shivered, despite the temperature, and switched on the light, knowing that no matter what she did today, everything would seem grey and cold.

0o0

Spencer tapped the blunt end of his pencil against the notebook he was poring over. It was one of Zoe – the last in the line of materials they had borrowed from her mother in case she had written anything telling about the identity of her murderer. He had spent the last hour reading them through, and apart from learning that Zoe was a meticulous note-taker, he hadn't learned anything new.

It was a real shame that she'd been killed before she had the chance to make her own mark on the criminological community. She had such a strong, clear voice from the notes. It felt a little like he was getting to know her, which made him all the more determined to catch the guy who had throttled her.

"See anything?" Rossi asked, bringing him back to the room.

"Just the notes of an observant student," he said, scratching his nose. "I've been thinking, though. Zoe got all of her information from the newspapers, and from Paula McConnell's column. There's no way she could have known about every homicide in the city."

"Well, not every homicide's reported in the papers," Hotch reminded him.

"So, how do we know the unsub didn't commit more murders than the ones noted in her journals?"

"We don't," Rossi answered heavily.

"We can check missing persons and see if anyone was last seen in the unsub's operating zone," said Hotch, prowling beside the board.

Spencer nodded and reached for a nearby file, which he began ploughing through it at speed.

"Hmm," said Rossi, watching him.

"What?" asked Spencer, looking up and wondering what he'd done this time.

Had he said something weird?

"Well, a young person's mind is so active," Rossi observed. "Yours, Zoe's – and I imagine this unsub's too."

"I think when we get him he'll be curious," Hotch agreed. "He'll ask questions."

He was about to say something more, but was interrupted by the swift arrival of JJ, who hissed, "Rossi, head's up – _she knows!_ "

It would have been rather cryptic if Zoe's mother hadn't been hot on the media liaison's heels, brandishing what looked like a receipt. Reid twisted in his seat to see, surprised.

"Did you do this?" she asked Rossi, who looked mildly sheepish, but seemed unable to respond. "I don't need or want your money," the woman said, clearly furious. "I have taken care of my daughter for twenty-two years, and she is _still_ my responsibility. I don't need any help from you!"

 _He must have sent an anonymous donation,_ Spencer realised, glimpsing the familiar receipt format most funeral homes employed.

He bit his lip, unable to take his eyes from the scene playing out before him. He glanced up at Hotch, who met his gaze with a pained expression on his face.

"You didn't even know her!"

Rossi, clearly at a loss, swallowed. "I'm sorry if I've offended you."

"Just leave us alone," she cried tearfully before turning and hurrying away.

Once she'd gone, Rossi slipped out of the room, closely followed by JJ – though both headed in different directions it was obvious that JJ had at least been party to whatever Rossi had tried to pay for. The funeral, probably.

Hotch sighed the sigh of a man who had to keep a close eye on the emotional barometer of his team if he wanted a reasonably quiet life and went in search of the coffee machine, leaving Spencer alone with the files and his thoughts.

It was difficult, he reflected, to put personal guilt and grief aside when you felt responsible for a death. He'd read the note Zoe had made on Rossi's books, and during his talk the evening she was murdered, and she had obviously hero-worshipped their friend. He wondered what he had said to her that he felt had encouraged her towards her death. Nothing that seemed harmful at the time, knowing Rossi.

Spencer sighed.

But to intrude on a mother's grief like that, when it was so raw and she and her daughter were such strangers…

Rossi had obviously meant well, ensuring that the donation he'd made was anonymous – and it had been a kind gesture – but Spencer could well understand how Zoe's mother could have found it patronising at best.

Really, he had acted out of the urge to assuage some of his own guilt. Not that it was a bad thing, necessarily, but paying for a funeral was one of the last opportunities a family had to care for their loved ones. Part of the closure they needed to move on. He really ought to have thought about it a bit better. Maybe approached her mom after a few months had passed and offered to set up a scholarship in criminology in Zoe's name.

Grief was a complex thing, and it could last (in varying forms) for a lifetime.

There were plenty of ways to be there for someone without crowding them. He just wished Rossi had picked one that had worked.


	12. Objective Perspective

**This missing deadline thing is becoming an unfortunate habit. To make up for my tardiness, I'm posting two chapters this week – one today and one on Friday at the usual time. Thanks for your patience.**

 **Pxx**

 **0o0**

 **Essential listening: Like Her, by Mandalay**

 **0o0**

The homeless woman was lying on the ground beside her overturned trolley, sightless eyes staring to the heavens. Scuff marks in the soil around her suggested she had put up a fight – or tried to. There were minimal defensive marks on her fingers.

 _He must have come up behind her and slipped the garrotte over her head,_ Spencer thought.

"This was recent," he remarked, bending over the corpse. "The bruises on her neck are still reddish."

"Which means he's evolving," Pearce reflected, standing slightly back from the others. "Hunting in daylight is a big step away from hunting at night."

Spencer glanced in her direction and frowned. She was pale today, even out of doors, and had yet to eat, as far as he had seen. It wasn't a fire scene, which sometimes made her look a bit peaky, and although the crime scene held the scent of death, it wasn't overpowering here. Perhaps she was sick. He hoped whatever it was, it wasn't contagious.

Hotch was kneeling beside the woman, peering keenly at her. "No other obvious signs of trauma."

"Well, this isn't a bike path like the last one," Detective Brady said, sounding mightily fed up with the whole situation. "Which serial killer's he mimicking now?"

"I don't think he is mimicking anymore," Spencer told him. "He's starting to show consistency. I – I think he's developing his own style."

"He's found his groove," Pearce observed sourly.

She turned away, ostensibly examining the rest of the scene, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Spencer narrowed his eyes at her. She was distancing herself from them – and from the scene.

"Has anybody touched her?" Hotch asked abruptly, the tone of his voice immediately changing.

Spencer responding to it immediately, knowing from the tone that Hotch had spotted something important. Pearce, however, didn't move.

Brady shook his head. "No. They had instructions to wait for us and the ME."

"Where is he?" Hotch asked, beginning to sound urgent.

Brady looked up and around the group of people clustered on the far side of the tape. "Doctor Edwards!" he called, beckoning them over. "Here he comes."

It was the movement of the ME passing her that brought Pearce's attention back to the scene.

"Have you got something?" she asked, watching their boss's face.

She met Spencer's gaze when he didn't respond. He gave her a sort of facial shrug. There was definitely something Hotch could see here that they couldn't, but the fact that she hadn't been focussed enough to notice that something was happening was worrying.

"Hi, Agent Hotchner," said Hotch briskly as the ME approached. "Could you take a look at this spot on her forehead?"

"Huh," said Spencer, finally seeing what Hotch had noticed.

There was a small, extremely clean spot on the woman's forehead – the rest of her face was coated in the grime of living on the street. He hadn't been able to see it until Hotch had pointed it out because of the glare of the sun at the angle from which he was observing.

"That's strange," said the ME, following his gaze. "Let me swab her and get it back to the lab."

"Thanks," said Hotch, getting to his feet.

"Someone cleaned just that spot," Spencer reflected, as he and Pearce followed Hotch back to the SUV. "If it was our unsub –"

"Which seems likely," Pearce put in.

" – then why?"

"Could be symbolic," Pearce mused, without enthusiasm. "I don't know."

"It's in about the right place for the crown chakra, isn't it?" he asked, and she shrugged, making a non-committal noise, as if her heart wasn't really in the conversation.

She got in the back of the Yuke – taking his usual spot, and remained silent for the drive back over to the department.

 _Okay, there is definitely something wrong with her,_ Spencer thought, watching her reflection in the wing mirror as Hotch theorised about their unsub's new consistency.

Pearce wasn't listening at all, simply staring blankly out of the window, not even watching the world go by. It was very unlike her to lose focus on a case – even if she was feeling under the weather. Generally she would stick at something doggedly until either she dropped or Hotch forced her to go and rest.

 _Perhaps it's a good thing she came back off leave,_ he thought. _At least this way she's not using up her vacation time feeling rough._

Even as the words entered his mind his frown deepened. She had intended to have today off – this whole week in fact, until Rossi had come back from AL early with the case from hell.

Which meant in all likelihood that she knew in advance that she would be feeling bad right now.

Quietly, Spencer slipped his cell phone out of his pocket and glanced at the date.

 _Ah._

0o0

"Three murders in the last three days," Derek mused. "Somethin's causing his frenzy."

"Could be a drastic change in his life. Something he lost control of," Rossi speculated.

"Or," said Prentiss, "it could be something he _gained_ control of – like himself. Uh, if he's finally defining himself as a strangler, he may just be practising. Perfecting his style. He may have awakened."

JJ came in, looking perplexed. "Uh, coroner just called. Preliminary tests confirmed cetyl alcohol on the homeless woman's forehead."

"He sterilised it?" Rossi asked, surprised.

"Why would he do that?" JJ wondered.

"Maybe he did somethin' to her forehead," Morgan suggested. "Used an alcohol wipe to remove evidence."

"Well, if that's the case, it certainly wasn't necessary to the crime," Prentiss argued. "This could be part of his signature."

"We should look at other victims to see if he did something similar," Rossi decided.

JJ winced. "Any evidence on the last victim was washed away in the water," she reminded them.

"And all the other bodies were either buried or cremated," Morgan grumbled.

Rossi nodded slowly. "Except for one."

0o0

It hadn't taken Rossi long to convince Sheila Hawkes to release her daughter's body back to the coroner for a second look, though she imagined having to go to her after the debacle with the funeral home had been unpleasant. Morgan had filled her in when she, Reid and Hotch had got back to the station, and she was glad she hadn't been there to witness the fallout. Especially today.

With any luck, the coroner would find something useful and Zoe's death wouldn't be entirely in vain – in as far as any death really could be.

Sheila had a hard road in front of her, which Grace knew better than most. Hopefully knowing that she and her daughter had done everything they could to help – posthumously, at any rate.

They would have to wait a little longer for the results. Meanwhile the rest of the team were consolidating any information they had on the other murders, but Grace had been unable to concentrate. They had broken for dinner and she had slipped out unobserved.

Grace hugged her knees.

She was curled up with her back against the air con vent on the roof of East Cleveland Police Department, trying very hard not to cry.

A busy police department wasn't the kind of place she could keep people away from without arousing suspicion – and that was the last thing she needed, now at least two of the members of her team knew enough to glance her way whenever anything weird happened.

The early evening stars were out, sprinkled across the deep blue-green of twilight, and it might have been very beautiful on a different day.

Her breath fogged in the air. She knew that by now she must be chilled through to her marrow, but she could barely feel it. She had been numb all day. She hadn't felt hungry or thirsty, though she was reasonably sure someone had plied her with tea a couple of times. Possibly Reid. She hadn't been paying attention.

Any energy or focus she did have had been channelled entirely on the case, but even in that she knew she was lacking. She was no use to anyone today.

She should never have come back off leave.

The door to the fire escape leading to the roof swung open with a heavy creak and Grace tensed, expecting an officer on a smoke break to appear. Hurriedly, she scrubbed the tear tracks from her face with the sleeve of her cardigan. The footsteps paused outside the door, as if their owner had stopped to look around, then they started towards her.

She tried to make herself look presentable as best she could as they approached, though she knew she was at least partly concealed by the air vent. Perhaps they would simply walk past without seeing her.

She didn't want to have to explain this to anyone.

Reid's slightly worried expression appeared around the side of the vent.

"Hey," he said, relaxing slightly.

 _He must have been looking for me_ , she guessed.

"Do they need us downstairs?" she asked, starting to get up.

"No," he said at once, waving her back to her original position. "I just – I figured you would be up here."

"Oh," she said, surprised.

Although their battered friendship was undergoing something of a repair, it was unusual for him to seek her out for anything that wasn't work related – or directly requested by Hotch.

Her eyes dropped to his other hand, in which was a small white, cardboard box. He held it out.

Assuming it contained takeout, she was about to thank him for the kind gesture and tell him that she wasn't hungry, when he spoke, stopping her short.

"I – um – I don't wanna… I mean, I didn't want to intrude," he said haltingly, as she took it from him. "I-I just know it's – uh – it's been, it's been really busy today and I didn't know if you'd had time to – to get away and, uh… pick one up."

Numbly, Grace opened the lid of the box. For a second it felt like all the air inside her body had gone. Her chest constricted tightly. Inside was a cake with a brightly coloured cartoon dinosaur on the top, four coloured candles stuck in around it. The name 'Michael' had been carefully written in white icing on the banner the dinosaur was clutching.

She swallowed and opened her mouth trying to speak, but no sound came out. She closed it again.

The thin gravel the roof was sprinkled with crunched beneath his feet as Reid sat down a few paces from her, with his back to another vent. Not directly looking at her or engaging with her, but near enough for her to know that he was there if she needed him to be.

The sweet, gentle nature of the gesture nearly broke her already shattered heart. It made her feel marginally less lost.

Grace tried to pretend she wasn't crying.

"I… I figured you didn't need matches," he said quietly.

Painfully, vision blurred by tears, she nodded her head. Her hands shook as she waved one above the candles and each burst into flame, but if Reid noticed it, he didn't comment. He just sat still a few feet away, gazing off into the night sky, as if sharing a cake for someone else's dead little boy was the most normal thing in the world.

0o0

Penelope typed hard and fast at her keyboard, unpicking the lives of the victims in East Cleveland one string of data at a time. An electronic chirp told her that she had a new email, which she opened without breaking her stride – at least until she read the contents.

 _Gotcha, you son of a bitch,_ she thought, deftly opening a new set of search parameters with one hand and hitting the autodial button on the phone with her pen in the other. They'd all still be awake, particularly Rossi.

" _Garcia, you got something?"_ he asked, as soon as he picked up.

"Yeah. The boys in the lab found trace amounts of saliva on Zoe's forehead," she told him. "Enough for a DNA sample, so we got a CODIS match on Eric Ryan Olson, 23, Cleveland native. Did two and a half years for attempted sexual assault and was paroled six months ago."

She could hear the grimace in Rossi's voice when he spoke. _"We thought for sure he'd be a student."_

"Uh, that's 'cause he was," Garcia replied. "While he was in the slammer, he took independent correspondent classes in Forensic Science and Criminology from an out of state school."

 _And they really need to vet their students better_ , she thought, glancing through his grades.

" _Call the team,"_ said Rossi. "Let's get a search warrant."

"Yeah."

0o0

Aaron stood ready, conscious that Dave, Pearce, Reid and Detective Brady were crouched to the side of and behind him, guns up and poised. He gave Brady the nod since it was his turf and the other man kicked the door in. The five of them swept into the apartment, clearing each room in turn. Soon, they were all milling around, underwhelmed and frustrated to find themselves without their unsub.

They were left with an overabundance of tension and nowhere to point it. Aaron set about marshalling it immediately.

"Reid, check the computer," he instructed. "Detective, we should talk to the neighbours. Find out where he goes, where he might be on a weeknight." Brady nodded, taciturn, and peeled off to make it happen. "Pearce, see if you can find anything that looks like a planner or a diary."

"On it, boss." She vanished into the kitchen.

"Aaron," said Rossi, emerging from the bedroom carrying a volume and wearing a troubled expression. "He's reading my books."

"No diary, but lots of post-it notes reminding him to shop for wire and alcohol wipes," said Pearce, returning from a rapid perusal of the other two rooms.

"Well, at least he's organised," Aaron reflected. It would make him easier to prosecute.

He glanced in Pearce's direction. She seemed more on the ball than she had earlier, which was a good thing. He'd been mildly worried at her earlier apathy and lack of energy. Now, though, she seemed focused and sharp, and that was what they needed.

"Anything else?" he asked under his breath as she passed by, but she shook her head.

"There's a lingering air of old takeaway, but aside from that? Nothing."

"Well, we know he likes to do his killing out of doors," Aaron reflected. "So that makes sense."

He returned to the lounge, where Reid was sitting on the couch with Detective Brady, rapidly trawling through the unsub's easy to access files. Really, when it came to mid-case investigations it was handy that he temporarily forgot that he was a technophobe – just like he could temporarily forget he was shy in an interview room.

"Reid, anything?"

The young agent glanced up from a perusal of the photographs the unsub had on his desktop, blinked and refocused his search.

"Al's Alehouse," Brady read, as it popped up in the calendar. "That's like five miles away."

"It's on his schedule for tonight," Reid announced.

Pearce scowled. "He's hunting."

0o0

JJ watched the uncomfortable and angry young woman through the glass. The others had told her how they had tracked the unsub to a dark park, where he had been stalking a young woman. They had barely spotted him before he'd pounced on her.

They had all been most taken aback when it transpired that the young woman wasn't a victim – yet, at any rate – but rather a willing participant in Olson's dark and twisted sex games.

"She's really his girlfriend?" JJ asked Emily, who was preparing to go in.

"Yep."

JJ sighed. "I do not understand the 'I've been attacked by an assailant' fantasy. I mean, everyone has a kink, but that's a step too far for me."

"You and me both," Emily mused.

"Do you think she knows?"

Emily thought about it. "I don't know," she replied, after a moment. "Probably not consciously."

She went into the interview room; the woman inside immediately began glaring at her.

Morgan, Hotch and Rossi joined JJ at the window.

"Did _not_ see that comin'," Morgan commented.

"How could she not know?" JJ asked, shaking her head.

"Kenneth Bianchi's fiancé had no idea he was one of the hillside stranglers," Rossi told her.

"Just like BTK's wife," Morgan mused. "Sometimes they just don't know."

He and JJ stared at the young woman, trying to fathom reconciling a lover's identity to something monstrous like that.

 _It must destroy any trust you ever had in people,_ JJ thought. _And any confidence in your own judgement._

"What do we know about her?" Hotch asked, breaking the spell.

"Her name's Linda Jones," JJ replied, tearing her eyes away. "No criminal record. They met online six weeks ago."

0o0

"No, he can't be this guy," Linda insisted.

"We found his DNA on a murder victim," Emily told her.

She had long since learned that a sharp blade left the slightest scars on the psyche. There was no point sugar-coating this. Not now, when they knew what this guy was capable of.

" _What?"_

"We also think he's responsible for the murder of seven other people over the last seven weeks," she continued. "Two of his victims were raped."

Linda blanched and pressed a hand to her mouth. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

Swiftly, Emily rose and grabbed the trash can in the corner, holding the woman steady as she retched into it. "Okay, okay," she said, gathering her hair and holding it out of the way.

It was going to be a long night.


	13. In Black and White

**Chapter 13 – In Black and White**

 **Essential listening: Late Bloomer, by Allie Moss**

0o0

Olson's lawyer emerged from the interview room, looking distinctly unhappy.

"Against my counsel, my client would like to speak with Agent Rossi," he said, in the manner of someone who had been arguing about this for several minutes.

He ducked back into the room without further communication.

Dave, Hotch, Morgan and Brady shared a dark look.

"We talked about the possibility of him being curious, asking questions," Hotch reminded him.

Dave thought, _Yes, but that was before we knew he was reading my books. Now he just wants to crow about his murders. Like I'm partly responsible…_

 _But I am partly responsible. For Zoe – and for all the others he tortured with the horrors I talked about in my books._

"I'll keep him talking, try to get him to open up," he said aloud.

Hotch nodded. "Good."

Olson was a clean, pleasant looking young man that no one in the world would feel threatened by – unless they met his gaze. There was something dark in his pale grey eyes that unsettled Rossi immediately. Someone with less experience wouldn't have stood a chance.

No wonder Zoe didn't clock him as a threat. Not until it was too late.

 _And she wouldn't have been out there if you hadn't encouraged her,_ he reminded himself, feeling wretched.

Olson looked up and smirked when Dave went in, and he had to fight the urge to smack that arrogant little look of the kid's face.

"Agent Rossi," said the young man in greeting as Dave closed the door. "Big fan."

 _Looks like he's going with smug,_ thought Dave, resigned to it. _Big surprise._

"We have some information that would be of great interest to you," said the lawyer calmly.

Rossi sighed and took a seat. "My ears are burning."

"My lawyer here explains that I'm being charged with eight murders," said Olson. "And that I'm probably looking at the death penalty."

Dave kept his face impassive, ready for whatever bombshell he was about to deliver.

"I have one very important question for you," said Olson, with quiet confidence. "Are you sure it's just eight?"

0o0

Outside the interview room and listening over the intercom, Detective Brady swore. "What?"

"We checked missing persons," JJ told him. "Since he started killing, four people have been reported missing in East Cleveland neighbourhoods."

Morgan nodded, watching Olson through the glass. "We can't rule out any of them as his potential victims."

"He marked pages on several serial killers," Hotch added. "We don't know which ones he tried to copycat."

Brady huffed, frustrated. "We're screwed then. The DA's going to have to offer him a deal."

"The DA doesn't have to give him the option," Hotch reasoned.

"That's easy for you to say," Brady groused. "You get to go home tomorrow. What do I tell the families of the missing? 'Sorry, no idea.'?"

"Detective, we're not gonna leave until we can give you and the families some closure," JJ assured him as Hotch went off to make a call.

"And how are you gonna do that?" he asked, obvs still annoyed at the possibility of a deal.

"Reid," said Hotch, behind them.

" _Hotch."_

"I need something – anything that might show where he was trawling for more victims."

0o0

"I can't believe he's pulling the 'I have more bodies, you have to cut a deal with me' card," Pearce grumbled, from inside one of the unsub's kitchen cupboards. "That's low, even for an unsub."

"I think, where this guy is concerned, there is no such thing as 'low'," Spencer mused, searching through the stack of takeout menus beside the largely empty refrigerator. "Anyway, you know what they're like. Any opportunity to hold power over someone."

She grunted and got to her feet. "If he took trophies, they're either somewhere else or hidden in such plain sight that we just can't see them." She huffed, tired and frustrated.

"We'll just keep looking," he said, aware of how much the day must have taken out of her.

She wasn't normally this defeatist.

Spencer moved onto the cabinet by the door, which was mostly underused pans, conscious that she was watching him. He could feel her eyes on his back, and when he shifted the cookware to one side, he saw her reflected in the burnished metal, obviously pissed that their unsub was trying to pull one over them and not hiding it particularly well. There was something else, too, in her unusually unguarded expression.

She waited until the forensic technicians who were helping them take the apartment apart had moved into the bedroom before speaking.

"Hey, Spencer?"

That got his attention. It had been a long time since he'd heard her say his first name. And she had spoken so softly. He stood up, brushing the dust from his knees, and turned to her.

"I just wanted to…" she trailed off, looking at the floor, then met his gaze with the barest flicker of her usual steel. "Thank you, for – you know, for being… for the roof."

She was speaking quietly and haltingly, which was most unlike her. The carefully contained mask she kept up in times of stress was practically non-existent, and that fact alone told him how deeply the anniversary of Michael's birth had affected her.

 _It must be agony,_ he thought, _for the world to keep going on a day like this, and to have to keep pace with it._

"It's okay," he said, gently.

"Really, it –" Grace swallowed. He got the impression that she was taking a moment to collect herself. "It made me feel like I had a foundation again."

"I'm glad I –" He looked down, badly wanting to give her a hug, but knowing it was not a good idea. "Good."

That might have been the end of it, but she continued, unconsciously stepping closer, "Do you remember, just after Henry was born – you had my back then, too. And I didn't know how to –" She took a breath. "Well… thank you for that, as well."

He gave her a half-hearted smile. "That's what friends are for, right?"

"Right."

She nodded and so did he, which made part of his hair fall in front of his face.

He was about to reach up and tuck it behind his ear when her hand rose, as if she had had the same thought. Spencer's mouth went dry. At the last second, she seemed to realise what she was doing and jerked her hand away as if it had been burnt.

"I'm going to go check the – uh –"

"Yeah," he said hurriedly, as she fled the room.

His heart was hammering in his chest; it took a moment for him to steady himself. Before she had moved he could have let her unexpected candour pass, particularly on a day when she so desperately needed comfort. He might even have given in and held her, which was all he'd really wanted to do since he'd gone to meet her on the roof. Just to make her feel less alone.

 _Bad idea_ , Spencer reminded himself. _Don't go there._

It would be so easy to lose himself in her again – and he would, he knew, if he let his guard down. She was a kind of addiction, every bit as powerful as the Dilaudid had been and – though she didn't mean to be – every bit as cruel. Allowing himself to be with her (or her to be with him) might numb the pain for a while, he reasoned, but ultimately it would come back, far worse than before.

"I can't do this again," he muttered and closed the door of the cupboard he'd been investigating with slightly more force than he'd been intending to.

Roughly, he pushed back the hair that had provided even such a slight temptation, angry at her for needing him. Angry at himself for needing her. Angry that he wanted to follow her and tell her it was all going to be okay – that he was a total ass for bringing up her father's death the way he had, that he really wasn't upset with her at all, but with himself, that being friends again was hard work, but it meant everything to him.

But he didn't.

 _That way madness lies._

He took a breath, then jumped when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

 _Good,_ he thought, seeing 'Hotch' come up on the screen. _Focus on the case. That's neutral territory. That's safe ground._

"Hey," he said, hoping the storm Grace had created inside his chest wasn't audible.

" _We need something on this guy, Reid."_

Spencer sighed, leaving the kitchen. "We've been through everything," he told him.

" _He marked up Rossi's books,"_ Hotch suggested. _"Check the bookcase. Maybe he was scouting for locations to commit more murders."_

"Nah, Pearce has already done that," said Spencer. He frowned, trailing off, his eyes on the photographs mounted on the wall of the hallway. "Pictures…"

" _What?"_

"Hey, Pearce. Come over here – I think I've got something…"

She appeared, wordlessly, from one of the other rooms.

"Framed photographs in his hallway," Spencer explained to Hotch, who was getting frustrated on the other end of the line. He looked around. "Nothing else – nothing else is framed."

"So, they're important to him," Pearce mused.

"They look like originals. Let me call you right back, Hotch," he said, hanging up and reaching for the nearest one.

"Trophies, do you think?" Grace asked, taking down another to examine.

It was easier to talk when their focus was limited to the case, and although she wasn't meeting his eye, she was acting as though nothing had happened, which was a relief.

"Maybe… I saw some pictures like these on his computer…"

She scowled at the picture in her hand. "Plain bloody sight."

0o0

"I need to ask you about your sex life," said Emily, feeling skeezy about it. It _was_ necessary though, to build up a picture of Olson's precise proclivities. It could lead them to the other victims.

"Th-that's personal," Linda protested, looking down at the table, deeply uncomfortable.

"Your boyfriend's a serial killer," Emily reminded her bluntly. "Your relationship is no longer private."

Wearing the look of a woman who would rather be anywhere else, Linda stammered, "It-it's completely normal to experiment with sex."

 _So you were doing something that you feel the need to defend,_ Emily inferred. _Or rather, he was doing something with you._

She nodded, however, allowing that. "Okay, it might be normal to have sex in a public park, but the other things?"

"We were just role playing," said Linda desperately. "Every couple has fantasies!"

"Did you ever think it was strange that your boyfriend has fantasies about strangling and raping women?"

"Not women!" Linda assured her, as if that somehow made it better. "Just me."

 _Ah,_ thought Emily. _And that's how she's been rationalising it._

She winced internally, knowing what she was about to do to this woman – and that it was necessary.

"Did he kiss you on the forehead too?"

Linda was stunned. "How did you know that?"

The remaining colour drained from Linda's face when Emily told her.

0o0

"We're going to have a lot to talk about when the DA gets here," Olson taunted, obviously trying to get a rise out of Rossi.

He'd been doing this job too long for that, however, no matter how personal the case was.

"What do you think you're going to get out of this?" Dave asked, keeping his temper in check.

"I don't know." Olson smirked. "We'll see."

"You don't have to say anything else, Eric," said the lawyer, evidently conscious that the young murderer beside him would likely run his mouth if left to his own devices. He could hear the superiority in his voice as well as Dave could. But it was his job to look out for Olson's interests, no matter how little he wanted to succeed at it. "You got to speak to him. Now let's just wait for the DA."

 _Sound advice,_ thought Dave. _But he won't be able to resist._

"I don't know how to break it to you, kid, but you don't have a card to play here," Dave told him. "We're three steps ahead of you."

"Oh? Really." Olson was unimpressed, but it was obvious he wanted to say more – to gloat about his own intelligence.

"We've already considered the possibility that you killed other people," Dave explained. "We knew you were young, wanted to experiment. It was likely you would copycat as many serial killers as possible to figure out who you are and what you liked."

He leaned forward, confident he had the smug bastard's full attention.

"So, let me ask you a question. How do you know you haven't told me already where the other bodies are buried?"

Olson smirked and cracked his neck.

Dave sat back, maintaining his expression, but that threat obviously hadn't held anything for Olson to be concerned about.

They needed leverage – and badly.

"Now, were you sick much as a kid?"

"I got strep throat every flu season," said Olson, mildly surprised. Then he smiled. "Did you just profile that about me?"

"Her name was Zoe Hawkes," said Dave, ignoring the question. "The girl you killed three days ago. We found your DNA on her forehead."

The lawyer rolled his eyes. "It'll never be admissible in court," he remarked, aware of how many times Zoe's body had been moved.

"Now most people would ask what you did," said Dave, unconcerned. "I _know_ what you did. You kissed her on the forehead."

Olson looked down, rattled.

"What I want to know is, why?" Dave continued.

Olson leaned on the table, as if they were simply two people discussing a theory. "Why do you think someone would do that, Agent Rossi?"

"Well, that's why I asked if you had been ill much as a child," Dave explained. "You see, you're slight, pale, sickly. Most parents, they kiss their children on the forehead to see if their temperature is warm."

He watched the flicker of uncertainty form on his opponent's face.

"Now, my theory is that you, somehow in your development, warped that caring gesture into something perverse," Dave went on, as Olson became visibly uncomfortable. "So, did you sit next to Zoe? To see if she got cold? Is that why you kissed her?"

Olson rearranged his features to something that looked appropriately bored. He would make a poor poker player.

"That's a really interesting theory," he said, forcing ennui. "Make a great chapter in one of your books."

Dave nodded, watching him. It was a poor attempt at needling him at best – but Olson still thought he controlled the deck.

 _House always wins,_ thought Dave. _And if we can find those other bodies, you're going to find out just how true that is._

0o0

"We found pictures on his computer in a special folder he created. They're scenic places in the city," Spencer explained over the phone, as Pearce carefully tagged and labelled each framed photograph. "Three of them I recognise from his crime scenes – but there are more pictures of places I don't recognise."

"We think they're trophies," said Pearce, whose mask of professional calm was firmly anchored once more. "Reminders of the places he's killed – or where he's buried the bodies."

" _Email them as soon as you can,"_ said Hotch. _"And Pearce, I'm going to need you out there."_

"Yeah, I figured," she said, as Spencer hung up. She stood up, stretching her back. "No rest for the wicked, I guess. Will you be okay here?"

She didn't meet his eyes, Spencer noticed, the only sign she was embarrassed about the moment of might-have-been that they had endured together before.

But then, it was quite an exceptional day, as far as Pearce was concerned, and – feeling calmer now and more in control of himself – he doubted she would have been so forward if she hadn't already felt so lost.

"Sure," he replied. "Will you? Out there, I mean…"

"Nothing I can't handle," she said briskly, but he knew she was lying.

He had seen the aftermath of her hunting for grave sites before.

0o0

As soon as they had figured out the link between the places Linda told them Olson had taken her for sex and the places he had killed – and to the photographs on his wall – they had him. It was especially satisfying to see him crumble, particularly given the smirk he'd had on his face since they brought him in. It had obviously given Rossi some closure to be able to deliver the final blow.

He had been curious, just as they had profiled he would be, and had offered the BAU (specifically Rossi, but they weren't going to give him the satisfaction) as many interviews as they wanted, as long as they explained to him why it was he had the compulsion to do what he did.

Derek swirled the end of his beer around his glass, contemplating the case. Most of the others had gone to bed already, except for Prentiss, who had challenged him to a game of Cards Against Humanity (just as soon as she fetched them from her room), Reid, who was staring out of the window on the far side of the bar with a slightly lost look on his face and Pearce, who had yet to return from the grave sites.

Rossi had gone too, though Derek didn't believe for a moment the man was sleeping. This case had cut too close to the bone for that. He'd decided to visit Zoe's grave after the funeral, Derek knew, to pay his respects. Hopefully that would turn out better than trying to pay for the funeral had.

It had really rattled him that Olson had taken 'inspiration' from Rossi's books, just as Zoe had – albeit in a much darker way. But that was the price of writing about the things the BAU dealt with. You couldn't prevent the wrong people from reading them – you just had to hope that enough of the right people did that it made a difference.

He'd heard him cancel the rest of his promotional anniversary tour on his way to the elevator, and Derek couldn't help but be a little relieved.

He glanced at Reid.

"Sure you don't wanna play, Pretty Boy?" he offered. "You were killin' it at New Year's, and I could do with a wing-man against Prentiss, if you know what I mean."

"Sorry, man," said Reid, with a flick of his eyebrow that never boded well. "Not really in the mood for jokes about dead children today."

Morgan nodded. As much as he liked the game, there were some cards that just weren't funny, in their line of work.

"Yeah, I hear you. I'm pretty sure Prentiss took those ones out though."

"Besides," he said, quirking an eyebrow, "I wouldn't want to give you an unfair advantage." He frowned slightly, as if he'd caught sight of something out of the window, and finished his drink. "I'm pretty tired. I'm gonna head."

"Sure," said Derek, as Reid hurried away towards the lobby.

Derek twisted in his seat to follow his progress, and saw him encounter Pearce by the main doors. Her dark glasses were back, despite the late hour, and she looked very pale. But then, she had looked off all day, now Derek came to think about it.

Reid called to her and she turned, sluggishly, which suggested she felt about as good as she looked, and Derek saw him press something into her hand. He could only see the colour (blue) and the size (small, about the size of something that might fit in a jacket pocket), but he was pretty sure it was Advil.

 _So he was waiting for her,_ he thought, as the kid practically fled for the stairs, leaving Pearce by the elevator, watching him go. _But he doesn't want to be in an elevator with her…_

"Everything okay?" asked Prentiss, from behind him.

Derek looked up to see her following his gaze.

"With me? Yeah," he said. "With them?"

They watched as Pearce got in the elevator and pushed a button, scowling at the doors until they closed.

Prentiss sighed. "Yeah."

0o0

 _In youth we learn; in age we understand._

 _Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach_


	14. Pleasure is My Business

**Essential listening: You Only Like Me With the Lights Out, by Avid Dancer**

0o0

The little boy looked back at the person holding the camera, laughing.

"Watch me, Daddy!" he demanded, working his little legs like pistons.

He managed a few feet across the lawn before the bike tilted and Jack was forced to put his feet back down on the grass, giggling in delight.

Aaron smiled, glad that despite the almighty mess he had made of his marriage, Hayley still took the time to send him things like this. The things he ought to be seeing for himself.

Jack set off again, with one hand on the handlebars, and one waving. "Look, Momma, look what I can do!" he exclaimed joyfully. "I can do it with one hand! Hi, Dad!"

He put aside the pang of regret when his phone rang. There was no place for it here.

"Hotchner," he answered, pausing the video.

" _Agent, this is Patrick Jackson, Attorney General down in Texas."_

"Yes, sir. What can I do for you?"

" _I've got a case here in Dallas and, well, your director thought you might be the person for a consult,"_ he explained.

"Could you forward the details to Jennifer Jareau, our liaison?" Aaron asked, hand hovering over the play button.

" _Not your team, Agent Hotchner. Just you."_

That got his attention.

"What's the reason for that, sir?"

" _You'll be briefed on the ground."_

Aaron raised his eyebrows. So it was urgent enough for him to be dispatched immediately, but sensitive enough that they didn't trust more than one agent appearing at once. "Could you send details about the case or the unsub?"

" _It's… not the unsub you need to worry about. It's the lawyers,"_ Jackson replied, hesitantly. _"How soon can you be here?"_

Aaron sighed and closed his laptop. Jack would have to wait.

0o0

Dallas, Texas, in an anonymous hallway of a big hotel.

Patrick Jackson, a solid, sensible sort of man with a lot on his plate, had met him at the airport himself and driven him straight to the hotel that Aaron assumed contained the crime scene.

"Does the name Hoyt Ashford ring a bell?" Jackson asked, as they walked briskly through the corridors.

Aaron thought for a moment. "Investment banker?"

"Close. Hedge fund manager," Jackson told him. "You might have seen him on the talk shows, all red in the face, saying the real estate crisis wasn't a big thing."

"I did see his public apology on the news channels when it was," Aaron recalled.

 _The man was an ass,_ he added privately.

"Yeah, well, that was unfortunate because now his lawyers want to classify this as suicide," said Jackson, leading him into what had to be the penthouse suite. "We kept the scene preserved. Your consult might buy us some time."

Aaron surveyed the scene: rich surroundings, a man sprawled dead on the floor, most of his clothes in place except for his shoes – which was telling. His suit jacket, which was tailored to perfection, was flung carelessly over the back of a chair. An empty pill pack lay discarded on the table beside a cooler full of what had been ice, earlier in the evening, and a bottle of ruinously expensive champagne.

There was a champagne flute just a few inches from the dead man's hand.

Nothing about the scene suggested a business transaction, and nothing about it suggested suicide.

"Well, most men don't take Viagra before they kill themselves," Aaron remarked, picking up the empty packet. "Does he have a wife?"

"At home with the kids," Jackson confirmed.

"So, mistress or prostitute?" Aaron asked, crossing his arms.

The Attorney General subjected him to a hard look. "Agent Hotchner, what I'm about to tell you is confidential information. It's not to be included in any reports. Every Wednesday, Ashford withdrew $10,000 out of the fund in cash."

Aaron rolled his eyes. So much for the public trust.

"Today was no different."

"So, high-end prostitute," Aaron concluded.

Jackson nodded. "We interviewed the valet, the concierge, nobody saw her."

"Well, that's not surprising," Aaron commented dismissively. "These women know how to be discreet."

Jackson scowled at the dead financier on the floor. "You'd think with profit margins in the toilet, they'd show a little restraint."

Picking up on the other man's turn of phrase, Aaron narrowed his eyes at the Attorney General. "So, this isn't the first?"

"We think it's the second."

0o0

"There was no question, now, that there was serial activity in Dallas. He'd have to call the others in – and he had a feeling whoever was putting pressure on Jackson wouldn't entirely like it. The Attorney General had escorted him to another hotel, where Aaron had checked in, contemplatively.

"I am going to call my team," he said, collecting his key card.

Jackson simply nodded, looking mildly relieved. "Understood. But there is a reason why I wanted you here first. I've got three judges and one state senator asking if I'm sure I have a case." He sighed. "You poke around this type of woman, this type of lifestyle, people get edgy, call in favours."

"I'm sorry," Aaron apologised, not entirely insincerely, "but the politics of this are your problem."

"Yes, they are," Jackson agreed briskly. "And of course, we all want her stopped…"

"You just don't want any big fish caught in the net," Aaron finished.

Jackson nodded. "That's how it's got to be. Or I have to rescind the request for Bureau involvement. Local murders, local case."

He sounded apologetic, and Aaron understood how much of this was beyond his control. They would have to tread extremely carefully here – at least at first – or no one in their victim pool would cooperate with them.

"Alright, I just need a place for my team to set up and all your case files."

They reached the elevator and Aaron pushed the call button.

"We don't have as much on Michael Stanton," said Jackson, as the doors peeled open. "But I'll send it over."

"We'll be in touch in the morning," Aaron informed him.

Jackson shook his hand. "Thank you, Agent Hotchner."

Aaron got into the elevator, nodding at the smartly dressed woman already ensconced within.

"What floor?" she asked, since she was nearest.

"Sixteen, thank you."

She took a step backwards and he could feel her watching him.

Probably hyperaware of men in enclosed spaces, Aaron thought, mentally cursing a society that made ordinary interactions potential threats. He turned his mind to the case, and was therefore surprised when she spoke.

"Long night?" she asked, apparently keen to break the silence, or to pass the time of day with a fellow night owl in a suit.

"Kind of, yeah," he replied, with a curt nod.

 _It's only just starting._

"Yeah, me too," she remarked, returning her attention to her phone. "These Tokyo markets are killing me."

She got out at her floor (the ninth) with an "Excuse me," and Aaron wished her a good night, reflecting that at least in her case, the flippant remark wasn't accurate.

0o0

 _The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture._

 _Camille Paglia_

0o0

"Female serial killers are a fascinating field," Reid observed. "We don't have much information on them, but what we do know involves throwing the rules completely out the window."

JJ smiled at him across the table, wondering with affection at how easily he managed to turn a discussion into something that sounded more like a lecture.

"Signature, for instance," he continued. "They don't torture or take trophies."

"That's because there's no sexual gratification when a woman kills," Morgan reasoned.

"Exactly," said Re. "Murder is the goal. They don't have to do anything extra."

"At least in terms of sexual gratification," Grace qualified. She and Rossi were sharing the bench seat opposite the table. With Hotch already on the ground, it was one of the rare occasions they could all fit around it without anyone lurking behind a chair. "They may develop rituals or have compulsions based on other needs, however. Wanting to make a statement, or systems of forensic countermeasures, for example."

Rossi nodded.

"So, basically, women are more efficient at killing?" JJ asked, with a touch of sarcasm.

Reid nodded earnestly. "Historically, they've had body counts in the hundreds. Based on statistics alone, the female is infinitely more deadly than the male," he added, shooting a long, pointed look at Grace.

JJ frowned. The words had probably come out more acidly than he'd intended, but the quirk of his eyebrow gave her pause. Usually that was a sure sign of irritation in the young genius. JJ glanced at Grace, who was wearing a tolerantly unamused expression.

"I'm not sure that statement is mathematically sound," she remarked.

JJ's frown deepened. Quickly, she looked around the table at the others, but if they had noticed their strange behaviour, none of them reacted. Though she had missed the bulk of it, she'd heard the bare bones of their disagreement from the others, of course, and while Penelope, Emily and Morgan had voiced the opinion (in varying degrees of annoyance) that they were both a pain in the butt to be around while she'd been on maternity leave, JJ hadn't realised what had passed between them had had such a long lasting effect. By the time she'd returned to the BAU they were working about as well together as they always had. She had thought everything was resolved. Four months was long enough to forgive and forget most things.

When she'd raised the subject with Grace, months before, she had simply shrugged and looked away – and Reid had refused to be drawn on it while he was helping her watch Henry. And they had both been so close…

Fleetingly, an image of two laughing agents unselfconsciously snogging in an alley in New Orleans sprang to mind, when Grace had been with the team for less than a day and Reid had been battling his own demons. They had been so happy around one another.

Perhaps she ought to keep an eye on them both, she decided.

" _So, assuming that the job is the stressor,"_ said Hotch from the intercom, gently nudging them back on track, "what are some of the reasons prostitutes kill their customers?"

"Money, drugs, post-traumatic stress disorder," Morgan listed, ticking each one off on his fingers.

"Anger at their position in life compared to their clients or clients' families," Grace added.

"At some point, every call girl, no matter how well paid, gets coerced into an activity she didn't consent to," Rossi pointed out.

"Aileen Wuornos used to purposefully stage paid sexual encounters as an excuse to murder men she thought would rape her," Emily recalled.

" _But Wuornos was psychotic and disorganised,"_ Hotch reminded them. "I – I think this girl's poisoning them before she has sex with them."

"Well she's using tetramethylenedisulfotetramine," said Reid, reeling off the scientific mouthful without a moment's pause. "It's a popular rat poison in China. Easily soluble in alcohol."

"That's probably saying something," Grace reflected. "She could see the men she's killing as vermin. At the very least, she looks down on them."

"I've known a few rats in my time," Emily put in.

"Me too," JJ agreed, as Grace nodded.

She didn't, JJ noted, look at anyone in particular, instead choosing to lower her eyes to the table. Reid, however, quirked his eyebrow again, refusing to look in her direction.

 _Interesting._

"Poison is the perfect MO," Rossi observed. "Quiet, quick – and the victims never see it coming because they think they're getting lucky."

Grace nodded. "There's an implicit trust between call-girl and client, too, particularly rich ones, who consider themselves above everyone." She shrugged. "Who would dare go against their wishes when there's that kind of money on the table? Least of all the staff."

Hotch agreed. _"Exactly. At $10,000 a night, these men are paying for discretion as well as for sex."_

"She has a history with them," Rossi inferred. "They see her repeatedly."

" _She didn't decide to kill them in the moment,"_ Hotch extrapolated. _"She walks in with the intent to kill them. And she's doing it before she sleeps with them."_

"So, she's not just organised, she's also methodical," Morgan reasoned. "She decides early on which of her clients are worth killing and which aren't, and she plans accordingly."

"Maybe the victims all share the same fetish," Emily suggested.

"Both victims were in their fifties, highly visible. Careful about their image." Morgan considered. "And if they were kinky in the same way, they'd go to great lengths to hide it."

" _And we're facing a corporate culture that'll do everything it can to keep us out,"_ Hotch reflected, frustrated.

 _Privilege for those who can afford it,_ JJ thought grimly.

"Actually, I had some luck there," she said aloud. "Hoyt Ashford's wife isn't too happy with how he died."

" _She's agreed to talk to us?"_ Hotch asked, surprised.

"Yeah, but because every silver lining has a dark cloud, the hedge fund released a statement. 'Ashford died peacefully in his home, according to lawyer David Madison.'" JJ recited. "They're already trying to close ranks."

Reid frowned, tipping his head to one side. "Does that language sound familiar to anyone else?"

" _What do you mean?"_ Hotch asked.

Reid pulled out a file, clearing his throat. "The press release from the first victim, um…" He extracted the appropriate piece of paper and read aloud, "'According to company lawyer… Stanton died peacefully in his home.'"

"So there's a wall of lawyer," Grace said. "And they're all talking to each other."

" _Prentiss and Morgan, start with the wife,"_ Hotch instructed. _"See if you can get her to open up. JJ, call the lawyers and tell them I want to meet with both of them."_

"You wanna play them off each other?" Rossi asked.

"I think one of them wrote both press releases," Hotch explained. "Let's see which one calls us back."

0o0

The Ashford house was a stunning mansion in its own grounds. Well appointed, sumptuously decorated, and weirdly empty, as if the occupants led entirely separate lives and only really spent time in the kitchen and their respective studies.

Yvonne Ashford was a beautiful woman, two decades younger than her husband, and obviously a capable business woman in her own right. According to their background checks, she owned a series of boutiques throughout the state, from which she made a tidy amount of money herself. She was obviously not a woman content with being a trophy wife – though there were rumours that her husband was not particularly happy about her business acumen.

Now she looked tired and overwrought, and extremely annoyed at what her husband had been up to immediately before he died. She was having to grieve for her marriage at the same time as her husband.

"Mrs Ashford, we're very sorry about your husband," Prentiss said gently.

"I've been getting nothing but condolences all day," she replied, rather tersely. "I feel like a hypocrite for accepting them, knowing how he died."

"We think your husband might have been targeted because of something sexual he did with this call girl," Derek explained, as gently as he could.

Yvonne looked away, obviously deeply uncomfortable about the subject. She was an intelligent woman. She was probably aware of what was coming next.

"We know this is hard," Prentiss told her. "But is there anything you can tell us about what he liked?"

"In bed?" Yvonne asked, more directly than either of them had been expecting. "I can sum it up in one word: younger."

"How much younger?" Derek asked.

"Twenty-four, twenty-five. It's…" She sighed bitterly. "That was when I met him."

"So, your age difference was part of the attraction?" Emily asked her.

"Are you kidding?" Yvonne replied, a little tartly, smarting over the years he had likely been cheating on her. "It was the whole relationship."

"Mrs Ashford, no offence, but your husband spent a lot of money on this woman," Derek pointed out. "Was there anything else at all that he liked from a younger woman, besides the ego boost?"

Yvonne smiled bitterly, but not unkindly. "You know, there is a certain kind of man, Agent, for whom the only kind of sex that matters is the ego boost. But in a marriage like ours, after a few years, it doesn't come voluntarily any more. You have to work at it." She swallowed, fighting back tears of disgust and betrayal. "Or, in my husband's case, pay for it."

0o0

Aaron stood on the steps of one of the megaliths of the financial quarter of Dallas, increasingly irritated to be being kept waiting in the middle of an investigation.

At twenty-five past the hour, he called JJ to double check. "JJ, both lawyers said that they would be here at noon?"

" _They both called back,"_ she assured him. _"And they said they would meet you at the Manchester Center."_

"It's almost 12.30, neither of them are here," he told her. "Can you text me the numbers? I need to call –"

"Agent Hotchner?"

He paused, assessing the smartly dressed woman who had interrupted him.

"Never mind," he said into the phone. "She's here."

" _Wait – she?"_

"Yes," he said, hanging up and shaking the woman's hand.

"Ellen Daniels," she introduced herself. "Barswell Consulting."

"Ms Daniels, we called two lawyers and neither of them was you," said Aaron, aware that she must be the spider at the centre of the web of legal obfuscation they were presently navigating.

"They called me to consult on the press releases," she explained. "My firm specialises in strategic risk management for firms around the city."

"Ah," he said. "You're a problem solver."

"And we have a mutual one, don't we?" Daniels said, in all seriousness.

 _Promising,_ Aaron thought, warily.

"Do you know who this girl is?"

"No," she said, with what seemed like genuine regret.

"Well, one of your clients might," Aaron suggested.

"Well, they're not going to open up to either one of us about it," she retorted, not impolitely.

"Then they're putting themselves at risk," he pointed out.

Daniels nodded. "Yes, I understand that, but you see, my hands are tied. None of these men are going to admit that they have a professional girlfriend."

Aaron assessed her for a moment. "I can subpoena their financial records."

"Then I would have to file about a year's worth of injunctions to stall you," she replied, with a light shrug. "Now, who needs that kind of hassle?"

He just about managed to stop himself rolling his eyes. Daniels was obviously an intelligent lawyer, but her coldness in the face of a serial killer was startling and infuriating. Still, he needed their cooperation, if at all possible, so he kept his tone light when he said, "Ms Daniels, this is not a game. I need a phone number, if not of this particular girl, then someone like her. Someone we _can_ talk to."

"No escort will agree to sit down with the FBI," she told him bluntly. "But I have something better for you, assuming you might be willing to overlook certain legal niceties."

 _Here it comes,_ he thought. _Her play. Her means of keeping the investigation at arm's length while not actually being technically obstructive._

It was her turn to assess him. "Do you want to buy a house?"

He watched her expression, surprised. Was this a joke? "No…"

She handed him a card, giving him a pointed look. "Yes, you do."

She left without another word. Aaron sighed, reading the details of the realtor from the card.

 _Justice and protection only for the rich, reputation above anything – no matter the cost._

He scowled and stalked away.


	15. Fake It, Take It

**Essential listening: Silk, by Avid Dancer**

0o0

They pulled up outside the property currently being shown by 'Marigold Premiere Properties' with mixed emotions. The name and phone number Ellen Daniels had given Hotch had panned out, and the woman on the other end of the phone had given then an address and a time when she would be free to meet them, but this was not the kind of wealthy, suburban neighbourhood they were expecting.

"Are you sure this is the place?" Reid asked, squinting up at the house.

A sign on the outside said that it was open for viewings.

"It's the address she gave us," said Prentiss, equally nonplussed. "I don't get it. I thought Hotch said we were going to meet a madam here."

Grace, who had been involved with an investigation involving high-end call girls in London, laughed. "She will be – this will be her cover. It's the best way of obscuring a network of money and exchange. It legitimises her – and her girls."

"Actually, there is an overlap between real estate and sex work," said Reid, which Grace took to be agreement. "Property is a safe and inspection-free investment for large sums of cash. Your brownstone," he said to Emily, "Used to be owned by a gigolo."

"What?"

Grace laughed at her stunned expression.

"Do you spend your evenings looking this stuff up?" she asked, knowing the answer already.

He took the mild jibe in the spirit it had been intended and smiled, his hand stuffed into his pockets. "I do, in fact. My apartment block had connections to the mob in the 1930s."

"Hello, you three!"

They looked up from their discussion to discover a smartly-dressed, middle-aged woman beaming at them, walking down the front steps.

"Uh, are you the –" Prentiss began, but the madam stopped her in her tracks.

"Isn't this neighbourhood just fabulous?" she declared. "And you're going to love this house!"

Prentiss and Reid were staring at her open-mouthed, but Grace had expected it, so she grinned.

"I have to say, the garden is delightful," she offered, and the woman afforded her a wider smile, glad one of them had cottoned on. Well, as long as they were playing, she might as well have a little fun. "But then, I'm just here for moral support. It's seems like the perfect house for a young, professional couple, moving up."

Leaving her colleagues spluttering at her, she tripped up the steps in the direction their contact was indicating and into the foyer. It was quite a nice house, she decided, looking around. She caught a glimpse of the madam ushering them both inside and Reid trying very hard to avoid the guiding hand the woman had placed on both their backs without her noticing.

Grace hid a smirk. She wished he wasn't so cute today, with his waistcoat and pocket watch. She fingered the watch her father had given her, absently, as they came inside. There was absolutely nothing doing there – and nor should there be.

"You two need lessons in faking it," the madam told them, as soon as they were inside. "I teach a class." She winked at Grace.

Reid rolled his eyes at her, still a little taken aback, but coping with the whole situation a lot better than Emily was. She seemed staggered.

 _Probably still distracted by the identity of her building's previous occupant,_ Grace thought.

Prentiss met her eyes, then shook her head. "I'm- I'm sorry, I just… I want to be clear," she said. "You are a madam, right? You arrange dates for escorts?"

"All I arrange are meetings," the madam corrected, with a touch of professional pride. "What happens between two consenting adults when that meeting is over is something I'm not liable for."

"Alright," said Prentiss, who was obviously still a few feet behind the conversation.

"Now," said the madam, clapping her hands. "Who wants a scone?"

"Ooh, there are scones?" Grace asked, feeling that the day was looking up.

"I have cherry or lemon," she said, leading the way.

Grace met Reid's eyes as Prentiss was swept along in the madam's wake, and they both had to turn away again to keep from laughing. It felt good to be walking beside him, in cahoots – even if only for a few moments.

She took a step back and allowed Prentiss to explain the nature of their visit while the madam – whose name was Lauren – poured three coffees and a tea, and delicately ate a pastry.

"Oh, yes," she said, when Prentiss was finished. "We all know about this woman. She's terrible for business."

"I guess there's only so many men that can afford the service you provide," Reid reflected.

"Well, that's certainly true," Lauren admitted, folding her arms. "But the way she's behaving, she's only hurting herself."

"Why is that?" Prentiss asked.

"An escort's client list is the most important investment she has," Lauren explained. "It's her daily income and her retirement package when she sells the list."

"So, by killing her clients, she's taking money out of her own pocket," Grace concluded, and Lauren nodded.

"So, she isn't working with a service, is she?" Prentiss guessed.

Lauren shook her head emphatically.

"No madam would allow an escort to kill off the clientele."

"It _is_ bad for business," Grace remarked.

Lauren nodded.

"What about the… type of work your employees do?" Reid asked, as delicately as he could. He was stammering a little now, aware that this woman must have been an escort before graduating to madam. "We're – uh, we're sort of operating under the assumption that this – uh – escort… is killing men who m-make her perform a… um a specific sexual act."

Grace got the impression that Lauren was enjoying how uncomfortable Reid, was just as much as she was.

She tilted her head to one side, playfully. "What'd you have in mind, sweetie?"

"I don't even – I don't know," he said, half-amused and half-terrified.

"Something she would find physically or psychologically damaging," Grace supplied, coming to his rescue. "I mean, I'm assuming it's the same as in all walks of life," she added. "Everybody has a line they won't cross."

Lauren nodded, but gave all three of them a slightly pitying look, as if they were schoolchildren she was fond of who had almost grasped a concept, but fallen foul of an intellectual trap along the way.

"If I may, I think you're looking at this all wrong," she said. "Start with this question: why would a man pay a woman five figures?"

"It's not for sex, is it?" Prentiss guessed.

"Of course, you've got to be good in bed to be successful," said Lauren. "But that's the easy part."

"What's the difficult part?" Grace asked, curious.

"What men want, more than the no-strings-attached sex, is a therapist," she explained. "Someone who will absorb the worst parts of their personalities."

"Their fears and insecurities," Reid said, understanding.

"Everything they can't take home to their wife," Prentiss realised.

Lauren nodded. "That's what I groom my girls to do. How to talk to these men. How to listen. Don't get me wrong, deviancy comes with the territory," she went on. "I can't tell you how many men need to be submissive as an outlet from their extremely stressful jobs. I _can_ tell you that if the sex was the reason she was killing these men, she would have broken long before she charged $10,000."

Grace nodded, trying not to meet Reid's eyes. He had gone very pink, and it was irritatingly attractive.

 _What women want is just as complex,_ she thought, then mentally kicked herself.

"So, it isn't how these men act in bed," Reid said, oblivious. "It's how they act out of it."

0o0

Morgan, Dave and Hotch stared into the elevator. It made for a bleak sight: a dead man wearing only underwear and socks secured to an office chair with several belts (one of which was possibly his own), his mouth taped shut and crosses drawn over his eyes in some kind of red pigment.

 _Lipstick, maybe?_ Dave mused.

"Victim was Joseph Fielding," he said aloud, for Aaron's benefit – he had been the last to arrive. "He was the CFO here."

"Poisoned?" Aaron asked.

"And staged," added Morgan, as confirmation. "She killed him in his office and then rolled him out here to be found."

"The lipstick's new," Aaron observed thoughtfully.

"Done post-mortem," Dave told him, with a nod towards the corpse. "Reid said female serial killers don't leave a signature. I think she did that just for us."

"She's already exposed him at his most vulnerable," Morgan said. "Now she wants to be noticed."

They turned, hearing a commotion at the tape line in the foyer. A heavy-set, harassed looking man in a nice suit somehow got past the cops.

 _Lawyer_ , thought Dave, instantly.

"Which one of you is Aaron Hotchner?" he asked, without preamble.

All three of them stared at him in astonishment.

"I'm Hotchner."

"Larry Bartlett," he said, offering his hand to shake. "I represent Mr Fielding and Webster Industries."

"This is a closed crime scene, Mr Bartlett," Aaron told him brusquely.

"Yes, I spoke to Ellen Daniels," he said, instantly assuming that it was closed to people other than him. "She said you're a very reasonable man."

 _Wrong thing to say_ , thought Dave.

Losing patience, Aaron nodded at the officer who had let him through and who now looked as if he wished he hadn't. "Escort him out, please."

"No, wait, please," said Bartlett, looking desperate. "Press is outside and they can smell blood. Any way we could handle this discreetly?"

"We're not about to lie for you," Morgan rebutted.

"You don't have to lie," said Bartlett quickly. "Just don't comment."

"Excuse us," said Aaron, drawing the other two a little further along the corridor, out of earshot. "Is there any reason to go public yet?"

"Well, validating her is exactly what she wants," Dave pointed out.

"If we hold back, she's more likely to make a mistake," Morgan agreed.

It was a gamble, but it might pay off – and they had laid similar traps in the past to try to force an unsub's hand.

Aaron's eyes went over Dave's shoulder, to where Larry Bartlett was waiting, looking worried. "He doesn't need to know that."

A tacit agreement passed between the three men as they walked back to the lawyer. Now they had something to bargain with.

"We need everything you have on Fielding," said Aaron. "Bank accounts, tax records, emails. Everything."

Bartlett looked from one man to the next for a moment, cagily, before nodding. "Everything."

0o0

In the room in the attorney general's office that Jackson had had set aside for their use, part of the team was sifting through the information Larry Bartlett had traded with them for their silence. Prentiss was pinning photographs to the boards while Reid, JJ and Pearce sifted through Fielding's accounts. They made for depressing reading.

"Eighteen cars, six houses and three boats," said Spencer, wondering what anyone would do with all that property. He pulled a face. " _Can_ you even boat in Dallas?"

"You know, when you're talking about that much money, ten grand for a call girl is like deciding where to go for dinner," Prentiss reflected wearily.

"Are you there, Garcia?" Hotch asked the intercom on the desk.

" _Affirmative."_

"I have half a million over here for something called 'The Batcave'," JJ said.

Across the table, Pearce made a noise of derision.

Spencer was halfway through wondering where in Dallas you might site a bat sanctuary when he remembered the comic book character and realised that was probably what she was referring to.

"And here's a picture of him as Fetish Batman," said JJ, pulling a face. "That is _wrong_."

"Oh, there is not enough mind bleach in the world for that, is there?" said Grace, leaning over JJ's shoulder and recoiling.

 _I'm not sure that image will ever leave me,_ Spencer thought, glancing at Fielding's picture. "Is there anything this guy _didn't_ like to spend money on," he asked aloud.

"It would probably be quicker, than looking for things he did," Pearce grumbled.

"Yeah, his ex-wives," said Hotch. "Fielding was married four times. He didn't have pre-nups with the first two, but he did everything he could to cut off his ex-wives."

 _That's cold_ , Spencer thought, remembering his own father. Though he had walked out – and although he was now on speaking terms with him, he doubted he would every fully forgive him for that – he had continued to pay the mortgage and bills until Spencer had turned eighteen. He had only found out when he'd taken over his mother's affairs, and it had been a bit of a shock. It had been a long time before he'd been able to put his anger about that away and be grateful that he'd bothered to do that much.

If he hadn't, his mom would have been institutionalised a lot earlier – and he would probably have ended up in the system. He shuddered, wondering what direction his life might have taken if that had been the case.

"Are there children involved?" Prentiss asked.

"Yes, with three of the wives," Aaron confirmed. "Hoyt Ashford was married a few times, too, wasn't he?"

"Mmhmm." Prentiss nodded.

" _You know, considering that when Kevin takes me to dinner_ and _a movie he defaults on his student loans, this amount of money is sick,"_ Garcia remarked.

"What did you find?" Prentiss asked, as Spencer took a seat.

" _Well, all three of our dearly departed rich guys were embroiled in bitter court battles over how much to pay in alimony and child support. And even when the court ruled in the wife's favour, which was almost always, these three charmers, just, you know, decided not to pay."_

"You know, I'm trying as hard as I can to be sorry these men are dead," Pearce reflected sardonically. "But I just can't seem to do it."

"Tch-yeah," Spencer scoffed.

Sad to say, the world was a better place without all three of them.

"Garcia, can you generate a list of high-profile Dallas CEOs who are holding out on their ex-wives?" Hotch asked.

" _One loaded losers list, Dallas edition, coming at you. Penelope out!"_

"So, why would a prominent business man who could easily pay child support refuse to?" Hotch asked.

"Power," suggested Pearce. "Greed. Seeing their families as commodities."

 _Because they're assholes,_ Spencer thought, in a voice reminiscent of Pearce's. He nodded. "For this type of overachieving personality, paying money after the marriage ends probably offends them."

"They're spending tens of thousands on an escort," JJ complained. "But they won't drop a dime on their wife and kids? That's _cold_."

"Narcissistic, self-absorbed. A pathological avoidance of paternal responsibilities," Hotch listed.

"Meanwhile, most prostitutes come from broken homes," Spencer reasoned. "She's listening to pillow talk. Could serve as some sort of trigger."

"How their ex-wives are cheating them out of money, how their kids are nagging them," Prentiss added.

"Everything that these men take for granted and that she never had," Hotch surmised.

A picture of their unsub was beginning to form in Spencer's mind.

"Well, should I assemble the police for a profile?" JJ asked.

Hotch shook his head. "I just don't think it's gonna help. She lives in a completely different world than they do."

"Same for the news-watching public," Spencer reflected, rubbing his face in frustration.

"And the CEOS who sleep with her won't admit it," Prentiss pointed out.

"Then we need to talk to the gatekeepers," Grace suggested. "The corporate lawyers."

"They've cleaned up after her," Hotch agreed. "Even if they don't realise it, they've seen this woman."

"Every time we've approached them, they've circled the wagons. What makes you think this will be any different?" Prentiss asked.

"Because she's putting them at risk, too."

0o0

JJ followed Spencer down the hallway towards the little kitchen. Hotch was liaising with Daniels and the Attorney General while Rossi and Morgan wrapped up the Fielding scene. Emily and Grace had taken orders for lunch and gone out in search of sustenance. Nobody would be paying attention to either her or Reid, not for at least twenty minutes.

And that was just what she needed.

"Hey, Spence," she said, as he switched on the machine.

He shot her a look of surprise. "Hey. You okay?"

"Uh, yeah," she said. "I was wondering if you were."

"Okay? Why?" he asked, evidently confused. "I'm fine, Jayj."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really? Only, you made that female of the species comment on the jet, and I saw the way you were looking at Grace, and I just wondered if you wanted to talk."

His open face clouded over as soon as she mentioned it. She could almost see the barricades going up.

"I don't – I don't know what you're talking about," he said dismissively and started rummaging in the cupboard above the sink for suitable mugs.

"Spence," she said, and just let it hang in the air, counting on their long standing friendship to persuade him to talk to her.

"There's nothing – I… Look, Jayj, we're working together fine, that's as far as it's gonna go." He made a pantomime of checking each mug and pulled a face at one, putting it on the dishrack. "That mould's been there long enough it's probably developed philosophy," he joked half-heartedly, then glanced in her direction, anxious.

She put her hand over his on the nearest mug to stop him. "It's been four months," she told him. "And you're obviously unhappy – and so is Grace."

"I'm not unhappy," he lied, and it was so weak a lie that JJ saw right through it. When it was about stuff he really cared about, he really couldn't lie for toffee.

"You're not happy, either," she pointed out. "And you were. Now, I've only heard third-hand what happened, but –"

"JJ, I really don't wanna talk about this," he said, quietly, staring at the hygiene notice on the wall.

"I know, I get that," she said. "But not talking about it isn't doing either of you any good."

He looked away, shaking his head.

"Don't you want to get to a place where you can be friends again?" she pressed.

 _Assuming friends was all they were._

If she mentioned New Orleans he'd clam up completely, she guessed, so she waited. Her gamble paid off; he heaved a sigh and leaned heavily against the counter.

"Yes," he said. "No. I don't know." He shook his head, sadly. "She makes me so damn confused."

JJ could hear the frustration in his voice.

 _So, what you had was more than friendship… and you really are still hurting._

Her heart went out to him.

"Don't you think she might be just as confused – and just as unhappy about not having you as a friend anymore?"

Spencer scoffed, but it was obvious he was more upset than angry. She leaned against the counter beside him.

"You guys were like two sides of the same coin," JJ mused. "I'm sure if you just talked to each other, you could be friends again."

"I don't know, JJ," he said, shaking his head. He sounded miserable. "She crossed a line."

" _She_ crossed a line?" JJ exclaimed.

Although she hadn't been there, Morgan had filled her in on their altercation in Vegas, blow for blow, as it were. Apparently Spence had a very different idea of what had occurred than Morgan.

 _He's in denial_ , she realised.

"She went somewhere I didn't want her to go," he said, sadly. "So, I took the biggest line of hers I knew how to find, and… and I bulldozed right through it. And now I don't think we can ever go back to where we were."

JJ patted his arm sympathetically. "Uh, no. No, you can't."

Spencer turned on her a look that was so utterly forlorn that she nearly hugged him in the middle of the Dallas Attorney General's office kitchen.

"You're both different people now – you won't ever get the friendship you had before back, that's gone," she told him. "But you might get something different. And that's gotta be better than moping around, glaring at her in briefings."

He shook his head minutely, his jaw locking. It was obviously something he didn't want to hear – and maybe the thought of being hurt was a powerful inhibitor.

"Look, Spence," she said. "It's not ideal, and I know both of you said and did things that hurt, and that you feel betrayed, but you've got to move on that. Both of you will be working at the BAU for the foreseeable future. Do you want to spend that entire time _not_ having the kind of friendship you had before? Or one that's a little older and wiser, maybe?"

He didn't respond, glaring at the bowl of abandoned looking fruit on the counter opposite.

"I don't know if either of you can get over this, or what kind of relationship you'll have in the future," she told him, hoping he was listening. "But I _do_ know if you don't work out what's stopping you being open with her, then you'll never get a chance to find out."


	16. Fortune Falls

**Essential listening: She Turns Me On, by Smash Mouth**

0o0

The lawyers had given them next to nothing, except for one junior member of the group (and Grace got the impression that she might not be a member for much longer, having given her employer's information away, whether it stopped a serial killer or not) who had remembered a penthouse that had been hidden away downtown.

It was ridiculous that someone helping an investigation like this should be penalised for it, Grace thought, as they rummaged through the penthouse. It was sumptuous and over the top and – in her opinion – too clean for anyone to really live there.

"There's likely an in-house cleaning service in an apartment complex like this," Reid replied, when she remarked upon it. "If I was making the amount she is, I wouldn't be doing my own chores."

"Come on," she scoffed. "No one is this tidy." She gestured around. "It's unnatural."

He shook his head at her, but she thought maybe he was smiling. She looked through the nightstand – there was nothing, really. Just a few moisturising ointments and a pair of earrings.

"Got anything?" Morgan called, from the lounge-cum-bedroom area.

"Nope," Prentiss replied, from inside the walk-in closet. "And she seems too smart to leave a receipt laying around."

"Yeah, ruins the mystique," said Morgan. "She's got to be whatever the customer wants."

"She's taking performance art to a whole other level," Grace observed.

"Hey, look at this," said Prentiss, moving into the bathroom. "She's got a lot of high-end designer jewellery here and then this."

She held up a tacky looking ring box containing a small silver ring, obviously of a much lower quality.

Morgan tried it on – it only fit on the very tip of his little finger.

"It's way too small to be an adult's," he remarked. "She must've kept it from her childhood."

Prentiss puffed out her cheeks, realising what it was. "It's a purity ring," she guessed. "By wearing it, you promise to save yourself for marriage."

Morgan raised an eyebrow. "She broke that promise a long time ago."

He rummaged in the closet for a moment and pulled out a garment made primarily of latex and air. He held it against Emily, full of mischief. "Hey, Prentiss. Got a whip?"

She gave him a look that told him he'd better stop if he wanted to retain use of all his appendages.

"Antique first editions on the bookshelves," Hotch observed, in the lounge.

"And porno in the DVD player," said Rossi, holding up a DVD case.

"Nothing identifiable," Reid reflected, looking around. "No pictures, no sense of personality. Her lifestyle is completely disposable."

Grace shook her head, looking at the enormous spray of flowers beside the bed. "It seems so hollow – empty. No wonder she's seeking validation in another way."

"Yeah, but murder?" Reid countered.

"I didn't say it was the _right_ way."

"Well, these aren't just for show." Hotch flicked through one of the books from the shelves. "Spines are cracked, somebody's read these – and recently. Who reads Voltaire in French?"

Every other agent in the apartment glanced in Reid's direction, but he didn't appear to notice.

"Someone with good taste," said Rossi. "Probably well-educated."

"You know, we profiled that she learned to fake privilege," said Hotch. "What if she's not faking it?"

Reid frowned. "You're saying maybe she came from money the whole time?"

"Maybe."

The phone rang, and for a moment everyone froze before diverging on it.

"Prentiss should answer," said Reid immediately. "If it's a customer, she may get more information out of him." He looked at Grace, almost apologetically. "Sorry, you're –"

"Too British, I know," she said, dismissively.

"Unless she's calling in for her messages," said Rossi.

Morgan was already dialling Garcia to get her to call in a trace. "Yeah, Garcia, we're getting' a call to this line – can you work some magic?"

" _I don't have a trap-and-trace in place yet,"_ she responded, springing into electronic action. _"Give me a few."_

"I'm going to stay on the line," Morgan told her. "She's going to work," he said to the others.

Hotch nodded. "Prentiss, get ready to vamp."

She was about to pick up when the answer machine chimed on. _"Hi, it's me. You know what to do."_

Grace frowned. It was strange to hear her voice in an ordinary setting; usually if they heard their unsub before catching them it was in the form of a threat or a taunt.

" _Aaron. I know you're up there. Pick up."_

They stared at one another, then at Hotch, who looked astonished.

" _Aaron Hotchner."_

 _A taunt then,_ thought Grace. _But why Hotch?_

She met Morgan's perplexed gaze. _Does she know him?_

Hotch picked up as Prentiss put the base-set on speaker so they could all hear. "Hello?" he said. "I'm at a disadvantage. You seem to know my name, but I don't know yours. Can we start there?"

" _I thought I could trust you, Aaron,"_ she said, her voice thick with emotion.

 _Interesting…_

"Who says you can't?" he asked.

" _I want to,"_ the unsub replied. _"I even looked you up online."_

None of the team had thought there was a personal connection between their Unit Chief and this unsub (it wasn't unusual for serial killers to research the people chasing them, after all), but five agents allowed themselves to relax slightly at that.

" _Is that strange?"_

"No," he responded carefully. "It's flattering to be noticed by a woman like you."

" _I thought you were so upstanding,"_ she complained. _"I watched the presentation you gave on school shootings. Someone had posted it on Youtube. And for a moment, I actually thought there were still good people in the world."_

 _She's a house cleaner,_ Grace realised. _Crap…_

House cleaners were a variant of mission-based killers with a keen and overblown sense of morality. They believed fiercely that they were the only ones who could see the filth and corruption in society, which filled them with rage – rage they took out on the people they saw as polluting the world. Usually street people – which was why they often went unnoticed until their kill-counts were well into double-figures.

This one, though, saw corruption in exactly the place it was.

Curious.

One thing was for sure, though. If this unsub was a house-cleaner, she wasn't going to stop until she felt her particular mission was complete.

"But I've disappointed you, haven't I?" said Hotch, reading between the lines. "Just like all the other men in your life who've walked out on their families, who deserve to be punished."

 _Don't push her too far,_ thought Grace, watching their boss's face carefully.

" _Did_ you _walk out on your family?"_ she demanded.

"No," he replied, not meeting anyone's eyes. "My wife left me."

" _Do you have kids?"_

"I have a son."

The other agents shared uncomfortable glances, aware of how painful it still was for him.

" _How often do you see him?"_

"I try to see him every week."

She scoffed. _"Do you see him every week?"_

 _So she came from privilege, but her family broke down_ , Grace inferred _. Maybe her father was like these men._

"No," Hotch admitted. "I don't get there as often as I want."

There was a pause, where she appeared to be considering. _"I believe you,"_ she said at last. _"But don't compare yourself to the men I see."_ She sounded weary, heart-broken and desperately upset. _"You are nothing like them. You're just another whore."_

Grace frowned. So, she saw Hotch as an equal. Interesting.

"How am I a whore?" he asked calmly.

" _You come when called,"_ she replied. _"You do their bidding. In hotels, you take the side elevator to avoid crowds while the men who pay your salary walk across the ivory marble foyer into their cars."_

Morgan and Hotch both checked their watches. If she was prepared to rant like this, then she wasn't aware of the track-and-trace – or was so upset that she no longer cared.

"Garcia," Morgan whispered.

They didn't hear the response, but Morgan gesticulated at Hotch to keep the conversation going.

"But I'm just frustrating you, aren't I?" said Hotch.

The unsub sighed heavily. _"What do you mean?"_

"Well, you want to show the world all these bad men," he explained, "and my investigation's just getting in your way."

" _No, Aaron,"_ she retorted – and now she sounded _pissed_. _"You're not doing your job! You don't want to arrest me. You don't want me in custody because you're in their pocket! You just want me to disappear! Just like they do!"_

"Truthfully, I'm only interested in finding you," he said, trying to pull her back. "You've been betrayed so many times you don't know who to trust and that's why that first murder felt so good. But each one since has been less and less satisfying. You know that's going to continue. Am I right?"

" _Yeah,"_ she said, sounding astonished that someone – anyone – understood.

"Come to me and turn yourself in," he offered. "I will make sure that you get the help you need. I won't let you disappear."

When the unsub spoke again she sounded calm. Too calm. _"If we met under different circumstances, I could believe that."_

Grace bit her lip. She'd decided her end-game.

" _I won't let you cover this up."_

The sound of the gun shot took them all by surprise.

"Garcia, talk to me," hissed Morgan urgently.

"Hello?" Hotch asked.

"Did she just –" Grace whispered.

"Garcia, focus. What do you have?"

"Hello?" Hotch asked again, but the unsub had gone. "Morgan?"

Morgan nodded, aware of the urgency of the situation. "1818 Corinth Avenue."

0o0

"Oh, for crying out loud," Reid complained as they pulled up. "How did _they_ get here first?"

"Feck's sake," Pearce complained, glaring at the news vans already clustered around their crime scene.

"She must have called them," Derek guessed. "Need back up?"

This last question was aimed at JJ, who was already heading in the direction of the nearest van. "I'll be fine."

"Rather her than me," Pearce remarked, checking her gun.

They ran through the forest of cameras and microphones, ignoring the questions already being fired at them.

 _No respect for the dead_ , Derek thought, grimly passing them by, tight-lipped. _Vultures._

"Get back!" Hotch shouted at the group following them in, and something in his voice pulled them up short.

Pearce stayed behind, arms stretched wide, keeping them from contaminating their crime scene – or getting shot, if the unsub was still inside.

After all, she may not have shot herself, just used the opportunity to go down shooting.

They stopped when they reached the car. The well-dressed, middle-aged man in the passenger seat was bound with zip-ties and had his mouth taped shut. Part of his brain was hanging from the shattered window.

"Must've blown out when she shot him," Prentiss observed, when they'd cleared the exits.

Derek nodded. "She's just getting' started."

0o0

Emily crossed her arms, listening hard.

It had taken several hours to wrap up the crime scene – hampered by the press, who had the scent of something going on right under their noses now and were reluctant to let go. Now the team was back at the Attorney General's Office, going over the phone call the unsub had made before shooting Trent Rabner, her newest client. His lawyer had been in touch, letting them know that he had warned Trent about their serial killer. Evidently, the warning had not been serious enough.

"Her use of the word 'whore' is interesting," said Reid, pausing the recording. "It suggests she's trying to disassociate herself from her actions."

"But she's become more personal with the murders," Emily argued. "She's changed her MO from poison to a gun."

"Well, and she changed her victimology," JJ pointed out. "Trent Rabner was faithful to his wife until she died. They didn't have kids."

"Her whole justification for who's worth killing and who isn't is gone," Rossi commented.

"She's obviously devolving," said Morgan. "This is gonna get ugly. She's the type who could go on a spree and take out anyone she sees as a target."

"It would be difficult," said Grace thoughtfully. "Given her target group, I mean. Even if she's no longer killing serial abandoners, she's still focussing on the fortune five-hundred, and occasions where they're in a place that's undefended are rare."

"Reid, go to the end just before she pulls the trigger," said Hotch.

Reid did as he was told and the others fell silent, listening to the unsub complaining that Hotch wasn't doing his job.

"Who's 'they'?" Hotch asked, pausing it again.

"The men she sleeps with, I'm assuming," said Reid.

Morgan shook his head. "No, it's bigger than that now. She's lumping Hotch in with the lawyers."

"And with herself and her fellow 'whores'," Grace put in. "Who 'come when called'."

"So, maybe it's anyone in a position of power, who could cover this up – cover _her_ up," Emily theorised.

"The purity ring you found," said Rossi suddenly. "You said it was tiny?"

"Only a little girl could wear it," Morgan confirmed.

"She wouldn't buy that for herself," Rossi proposed. "It was a gift."

"Who is giving little girls purity rings?" Grace complained. "That's way too young to be thinking about marriage or sex."

"Their fathers," said Rossi. "Maybe that's who she's talking about."

JJ raised her eyebrows. "Well, if her father was anything like these CEOs, he probably walked out on her, too."

"Okay. So, you're rich, you decide to start sleeping with men who are like your father to get back at him," Emily put forward. "How do you go about finding clients?"

"Could she have started with the service?" JJ suggested.

"She wouldn't need to," said Reid, shaking his head. "The madam said that she trains these girls how to act around these men. This unsub already knows how to do that."

"She said something else, too," said Grace, as Emily nodded. "She said that their client lists were like their pension package."

"They sell it when they retire," Emily agreed. "So, maybe our unsub bought her client list from another call girl."

Derek nodded. "It makes sense. They're expensive names. Only someone who came from money could afford it."

"So," said Hotch. "Who's recently retired?"

0o0

Ellen Daniels looked utterly nonplussed. She was evidently accustomed to running every conversation she had, one way or another, but this unsub had her out of her depth and in the Attorney General's Office (though he himself had diplomatically stepped outside) with three increasingly irate FBI agents.

She was also obviously trapped between a desire not to have too many of her clients killed off and the desire not to give any of their information away. It was an infuriating combination. She was listening, at least.

Grace folded her arms. "So, what we need from you are the details of any of these high-end call girls who might have retired in the last five years. That's long enough for her to establish herself, and to get angry enough to stat killing them."

"You're kidding," Daniels deadpanned.

"You keep tabs on who your clients sleep with," said Rossi. "You know who got out of the game."

"You're asking me to violate attorney-client privilege," she complained.

"We're asking you to help us catch a killer," said Rossi.

Grace held her tongue. There were many things she wanted to say to this woman, but none of them would be helpful right now.

Daniels considered for a moment. "Well, let's say that your profile is correct and she is the daughter of my client. If I do this, I'm going to need immunity on the back-end."

"For your client or for the killer?" Grace asked, but Daniels ignored her, addressing herself instead to the men in the room – the people she perceived as having the power.

"Come on, boys, give it up," she urged smugly. "I mean, you two know how this game is played."

Grace fancied she could actually feel the moment when Hotch lost patience.

"Yes, we do," he said. "So here's the deal. Give us the information we want or I'll arrest you on the spot for obstruction of justice. And while you're sitting in Dallas Central Booking, waiting to make your one phone call, I'll have the entire White-Collar Division from the FBI here from Quantico and they'll turn your offices upside down until we find what we want. That's my offer."

He headed straight for the door and Grace followed him, aware that if she stayed, one look at Daniels' deer-in-the-headlights, unexpectedly-sucking-on-a-lemon expression would make her burst out laughing. If she had been behind an interrogation window she thought she might have applauded.

She closed the door behind her, allowing Rossi to pick up the pieces, and joined Emily, Reid and JJ at the table they had been working around as Hotch stalked off towards Morgan and the kitchenette. They glanced up, questioning looks on their faces.

"God, Hotch is sexy sometimes," she said, grinning from ear to ear.

Both Emily and JJ burst out laughing.

Reid's mouth fell open. "Really?" he asked, staring at her, then at both of the others.

"Yeah," Grace told him, looking at him as if he didn't have eyeballs. He was a profiler, after all.

"Oh, yeah," said JJ, nodding in distinct agreement.

Emily nodded too, amused. "I know _exactly_ what you mean."

The three women started to walk away, intending to make themselves scarce before a likely intensely unhappy Daniels emerged from the office.

"Wait, but –" Reid got to his feet, still disbelieving, hurrying after them. " _Really?_ "


	17. Hold My Hand

**Essential Listening: Lazy Eye, by Hem**

 **0o0**

Derek and Prentiss jogged up the steps of the pleasant house in the pleasant suburb just outside Dallas where the escort who had retired most recently from the local industry had decided to settle down.

 _She is not gonna like this,_ he thought, as Prentiss rang the bell. _Not at all._

"Yes?" she said, answering the door with a smile.

"We're lookin' for Katherine," said Derek, as both agents flashed their badges.

He watched her face fall, that moment of panic and then the desperate lie. "You have the wrong house," she said, with a far more brittle smile.

"We're not interested in you," said Prentiss, as the ex-escort tried to close the door on them. "We're looking for the woman who bought your list."

A small boy, about three years old, ran up and joyfully wrapped his arms around his mother's leg. "Oh… Honey, go play with your toys, okay?" she said, sounding panicked.

The boy ran away giggling happily.

This was a woman who had a lot to lose. Derek fixed her with an expression that told her he knew exactly how much that was.

"Come in," said Katherine, understanding.

"Thank you," said Prentiss, as they followed her in.

"Her name is Megan," Katherine told them, motioning them towards a dining set where she would have a good view of her son, but far enough away that he wouldn't pay much attention. "Megan Kane."

 _Gotcha,_ thought Derek.

"And her father was a client of yours?" Prentiss asked, as Derek texted the name to the rest of the team.

"Andrew," she confirmed. "He was one of my eight regulars. He's a VP at Ebbett Oil now, I think. I saw him for six years."

"And is your son…?" Derek let the question hang in the air.

"No," said Katherine. "After I retired I wanted something good in my life."

He nodded.

"Six years is a long time to see one call girl," Prentiss commented.

Katherine looked philosophical for a moment. "Most men only have room for one affair at a time," she reflected.

"How did Megan know about you?" Derek asked.

"Andrew left his wife because of me," she replied, with a sigh. "Of course, he married someone else. But I – I wasn't surprised when Megan knocked on my door."

"You must have been surprised she wanted your list," Prentiss commented. "Megan had a lot of opportunities in life. Didn't you wonder why she wanted to follow your career path?"

"Megan didn't want to be a call girl," said Katherine, looking deeply puzzled.

Derek frowned. "She didn't?"

"She wanted me to go away," she told them. "She said that after I ruined her parents' marriage that I ruined her life, too."

 _Huh,_ thought Derek. _Then why is she sleeping with these guys? To get back at her father. I could think of less mentally and emotionally dangerous ways…_

"She bought my list so that nobody else would," Katherine explained.

0o0

They were gathered around the table in the Attorney General's Office, digging through reams of paperwork on Megan Kane.

"So, here's what we know about Megan Kane," said JJ, as Hotch hurried over. She handed him a photograph of a teenage girl and her parents, looking happy and healthy.

 _Must have been taken before her divorce_ , thought Spencer.

"Her parents divorced eight years ago," JJ told Hotch.

"After the divorce, she travelled internationally," Spencer added. "We're not sure when she came back from Europe, but she kind of fell off the grid, which is easier to do when you're making tens of thousands of dollars a night."

He frowned. Hotch had a look of shock and annoyance on his face that looked weirdly out of place on their stoic leader.

"Garcia put a trace on her father," JJ said. "Communication, accounts, the whole nine. I also forwarded the picture to Dallas PD and upscale hotels."

"I saw her two nights ago in the elevator of my hotel," said Hotch grimly.

Spencer felt his mouth fall open.

"Call Ebbet Oil," Hotch instructed. "Tell Andrew Kane I need to meet with him as soon as possible."

0o0

Kane had been entirely unhelpful, which had not been entirely unexpected. In fact, they had been so underwhelmed at their chances of getting him cooperate while Hotch had had a crack at him, they had made their own arrangements.

"We have a tail on Kane at his home and office," said JJ. "Are we sure this is going to work?"

"He knows where Megan is," Hotch reasoned, with real certainty. "He'll contact her."

Rossi nodded. "To protect his reputation if nothing else."

On the desk, the intercom crackled into life. _"Guys, I might have something,"_ Garcia said, catching their attention. _"Andrew Kane just reserved a room at the Wilmore Hotel. Room 2257 to be exact. Can I get an 'ick-ick-icky' on making an appointment with your own daughter?"_

"Megan won't show up until she's sure Kane's there," said Hotch, who seemed to have a keen appreciation for. "JJ, tell nobody to move until we get there."

"Yeah."

0o0

They had been waiting in the hotel room Andrew Kane had had one of his people book for hours. Grace had given up pacing and was now staring listlessly out of the window into the bright, sodium-lit Dallas night. It was a strain to maintain a state of constant readiness for such a long time. The team members were getting a little crabby.

"Movement," said Hotch, finally.

" _We haven't seen Kane or his daughter down here,"_ said Prentiss in their earpieces, as Grace, Morgan and Hotch pulled out their weapons and tensed for action.

" _There's a lot of entrances,"_ said Rossi, over the radio, who was stationed at the bar with a good eyeline on the main doors. _"We could have missed one."_

"Stay where you are," Hotch ordered, into his wrist radio.

They took up positions and aimed their guns at the door as the sound of the key card slid into and out of the door lock.

"FBI, don't move," Grace instructed, as the door opened.

Then she swore, privately.

Daniels, Kane's lawyer, flattened herself against the wall in terror, dropping her handbag, her hands in the air.

"He told me to show up here!" she said, at once, badly frightened.

"They could be anywhere," Morgan groused, as they checked their guns.

"Let's go," said Hotch, returning the handbag to Daniels.

Grace took up the rear, lending Daniels a guiding hand. She was badly shaken – who wouldn't be, with three guns pointed in their face? – and they needed her with them. If they stopped to process her here, Megan and her father would have all the distraction they needed.

"Come on," she said briskly. "Better get on before your client becomes his daughter's next victim."

0o0

Megan heard the key card slide into the lock. The hotel was expensive, which she had expected, and discreet. It was full of that bourgeois false luxury that she had come to detest.

She had tucked her legs up beneath her, aware that she could be in for a long wait – and how unnerved her father would be if he thought she was calm.

 _Might as well be comfortable,_ she thought.

She glanced at the two glasses of French champagne she had set out. The scene was picture perfect, which she had learned to be over the past few years.

Her heart fell over a little bit when he opened the door. God, she hated him. At least now she had his attention. "Hello, Daddy."

"How could you?" he asked, staring at her like the stranger he was – the stranger he had made himself be.

"How could I what?" she shrugged. "Embarrass you?" She scoffed. "Fail you?"

"My God, Megan," her father exclaimed. "Those men. They were… They were good men."

"Those men?" Megan demanded angrily. "Let me tell you about how good those men were, Dad."

"I'm not going to listen to this," he said, with one finger raised in a patronising fashion.

"Hoyt Ashford liked to play pretend," she said, doggedly. "Except the bruises that he left weren't pretend."

"Megan, you stop it!" he snapped.

"Michael Stanton?" She gasped, as if remembering something. "You spoke with him at a conference, didn't you? Do you know who he liked to watch me with?"

"I will not let you talk to me this way," he said, as if he were addressing a child.

"I even asked about you," she continued, stubbornly. "I wanted to know what it was that these women did that was so much better than Mom."

The look of horror on his face contorted into one of fury. "Shut your mouth!" he shouted, putting a hand around her throat.

For a moment, Megan wondered whether he would actually go through with it and strangle her right then and there. She hadn't credited him with the guts. Sure enough, he wavered and retracted his hand, seeing something in her that he hadn't previously. Or in himself.

"That's what they told me you liked," she said, triumphantly.

He turned away, and she laid her fingers on her neck, where the skin was tender. He was so obsessed with his own self-image; she hadn't expected violence, however – not from him. He was more the manipulative type.

0o0

"There are four luxury hotels in the area that the unsub frequents," said Prentiss, as she, Morgan, Hotch and Rossi marched up the hallway, Daniels and Grace bringing up the rear.

"We can split up, but we'll go in blind," said Morgan, annoyed.

"We don't have the kind of time to clear four hotels," said Grace, a guiding hand still on the back of the lawyer's arm. "She's settled on her endgame now."

"Ivory marble," Hotch said abruptly. "She mentioned it on the phone. The men who walked through the ivory marble foyer."

"The Chase Regent," said Daniels, taking them by surprise. She was having to scurry to keep up, but her brush with several heavily armed FBI agents appeared to have woken her up to the sense of urgency they had. Maybe she simply didn't want to lose a well-paying client.

"Are you sure?" Rossi asked.

"Andrew liked it there," she replied. "He said that the staff was very discreet."

At once, the pace of the agents changed from brisk to determined, and Daniels had to do a funny little skipping run to stay level.

"Alright," said Hotch. "Let's set up a perimeter when we get there. Nobody gets in or out."

"Better head to the Attorney General's Office," Grace said, abandoning the lawyer. "He's going to have some questions for you."

0o0

The bastard had taken a seat across the room from her, facing away from her. Like he could block her out again, the same way he had when he'd left her mom. He had been silent for some time. That brooding, heavy kind of silent that meant he was deciding what to do.

"The FBI knows who you are," he said at last.

Megan didn't even bother looking at him. "I know."

She knew she had his attention, however. She saw him turn out of the corner of her eye. "If you want to punish me, fine," he said, in an oddly conciliatory fashion. She gave him a look. That was probably the closest thing she would ever get to an apology. "But don't do it by destroying yourself."

She rolled her eyes.

"Let me protect you," he urged.

"How?"

"We'll turn you in," he explained, with that charismatic certainty that had got him his position in life – as a fortune five-hundred asshole. She had learned to read all the tells. "My lawyers can post bail. We'll get you out of the country."

"Of course," she retorted, correctly interpreting his concern. "Ship me off. Let me be somebody else's problem!"

"For God's sake, Megan!" he snapped, with what seemed like genuine emotion. "You're my little girl."

She looked away, hardly believing him.

"I love you." He sighed. "Please, please – let me save your life."

She met his eyes, which were filled with worry, and swallowed. "I'm scared," she told him, which was true, though it wasn't the FBI who frightened her.

"I know," he said, sitting beside her and laying a fatherly hand on her knee. "It'll be okay."

"Will you stay with me?" she begged, tearfully.

"Yes," he agreed at once.

Her heart ached.

"Do you promise?"

"Yes," he said, brushing a tear from her cheek. "Yes."

Megan burst into tears. She couldn't help it. She flung her arms around his neck and he hugged her tightly.

For a moment, she could believe that he cared more about her than about his reputation. It didn't last, however, as she had known it wouldn't.

"I need something," he said quietly.

 _Here it comes,_ she thought. Aloud, she said, "What?"

"Your client list."

Megan took a breath and let go of her father, forcing herself to stop crying and withdraw. "What are you going to do with it?" she asked, wiping tears from her face.

"Hide it," he told her. "If the FBI finds it, they'll prosecute you for all four murders. You'll never be released."

It was a powerful argument. Logical. Reasonable.

He had told her, once, before he'd left her mother in ruins, that that was the best kind of bullshit. He had taught her well.

 _I am my father's daughter,_ she thought, bitterly.

"Hold on," she told him, sniffling. "Just give me a second."

Megan walked out onto the balcony, where she had left her purse, and took a moment to close her eyes and enjoy the cool night air. She knew now what she had to do. Wrapping her cardigan more tightly around herself, she reached for the gun she had used to kill Trent Rabner – and that was the only murder she had committed that she truly regretted. If only he hadn't been so unforgivably smug about burying his and his friend's indiscretions. She had even rather liked him, before he'd run his mouth. As her fingers closed about the metal, however, she saw several black SUVs pull up outside, their lights flashing.

Her heart constricted, then leapt. She stuffed the gun back in the bag and pulled out the Blackberry she used to conduct her business instead.

"Megan, we're out of time," said her father, coming up beside her. He had evidently heard the sirens.

 _No accountability_ , she thought.

She handed over the phone. "This is it. It's my contacts, my clients, everything."

She allowed herself to smile at him, even when she detected the smug triumph in his eyes.

"I'll see you at the police station," he assured her, though she didn't believe him. She nodded, and closed her eyes as her father kissed her forehead. "We'll get through this."

He left, and Megan let the breath she had been holding leave her body. She didn't have much time, she knew. The gun she had carried with her since the parking garage she laid beside the crystal champagne bucket, before taking the glasses of French champagne outside with her.

 _Picture perfect._

But there was no one left to please, now.

By the time the agents burst into the room she was slumped low in her seat on the balcony, gazing sadly out into the night. If you looked at it from the right angle, where the lights were distant and you couldn't see all the corrupt, vicious things that were happening to people. She turned her gaze upwards as the two agents cleared the main room. At least the stars were honest.

"Hotch," said the other agent, the one called Morgan. She had come across a handful of names and faces when she had researched the unit chief.

Megan finished the second glass of champagne, focussing her attention on the cool air on the skin of her arms, even through the cardigan. She heard them talking behind her.

"Stay here," said Aaron Hotchner.

"Are you sure?" his colleague asked, concerned.

But Hotchner had understood the abandoned gun, as she knew he would.

"It's over," he said. "She knows it."

 _After all this time,_ she thought, not without irony, _and I finally found someone I can trust._

"I'll call 911," the other man offered.

"Hello," she said sadly, as he joined her on the balcony.

She wished they could have met under better circumstances. In another life.

"Megan," he said gently.

"Nothing will change," she told him. God, she was tired. "They'll just go back to doing whatever they want," she took a breath, trying not to cry. "And keep getting away with it."

"Not if I have anything to do with it," he said, taking the seat beside her.

She managed to smile. She believed him.

"Who was it that said, 'You don't pay a prostitute for sex. You pay her to leave afterwards?" she asked, allowing her eyes to close for a moment.

"It was Dashiell Hammett," he told her.

She quirked the corner of her mouth, aware that tears were rolling slowly down her cheeks and powerless to prevent them. "That doesn't make sense," she said. "The men always leave first."

With some effort, she pressed the SIM card she had removed the Blackberry before her father had arrived into the agent's hand.

"I'd give anything to see his face right now," she told him.

Hotchner took her hand in his two, larger ones, tucking the SIM card into his pocket.

He knew, she realised. She could see it in his eyes. He had sensed it, perhaps, or read it from the empty champagne glasses. But he wasn't raising the alarm. He was just letting it happen, and staying with her, with his gentle hands and kind, dark eyes.

"How could your wife have ever left someone like you?" she asked, in open disbelief.

He blinked, and she read the pain there – pain he likely kept hidden, most of the time.

"You're the first man I ever met who didn't let me down." She swallowed painfully. "Will you stay with me?"

"Yes," he said, without urgency or hesitation, but with a kind of honest determination that somehow made her less afraid – if only a little.

"Promise?" she found herself asking desperately, like a child.

"I promise," he replied gently.

Megan wept, trying to stifle the pain as her body surrendered to the poison. Through it all, Agent Hotchner stayed beside her, a stable and reassuring presence.

He never let go of her hand.


	18. Demonology

**Essential listening: Bury My Troubles, by Imelda May**

0o0

The cab pulled up outside the bar and Emily stared up at it for a moment.

The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that had formed when she had answered the call had not abated on the ride across the city. This was one place that she really did not want to be. Still, you couldn't put things off forever, even if you wanted to.

She paid the cabbie and slipped out into the freezing March rain.

It took her breath away when she saw him huddled at the bar. He looked just the way he had when they were kids. Desperately uncomfortable and wishing she was anywhere else, she walked over.

 _Well, I can't put this off forever._

She tapped him gently on the shoulder. "Hey."

"Hi," he said, surprised, and then obviously delighted. "Look at you!" He grinned and hugged her before she could stop him. "Hi!"

"Sorry, I'm all wet," she said, trying to get him to back up without actually saying it aloud. "I'm…"

"I'm sorry to make you drive in this," he said, with that same kind of desperate vulnerability she had heard on the phone. He let go and she could breathe properly again.

"I got a cab," she replied. "It sounded urgent."

He obviously didn't want to talk about it, though, urgent as it may be, because he grinned again, a little too widely. "It's really good to see you. It's been forever."

It had. And for good reason.

Emily lost her patience. "Johnny, what's… what's going on?"

"It's about Matthew."

She nodded, expecting bad news. It generally was, with Matthew. "Benton?" she asked, needlessly. There was only ever one Matthew it could be.

"He's dead, Emily," said Johnny, and she felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. "I… I didn't want to tell you over the phone," he continued, as she gaped at him.

After everything he'd been through. He couldn't be. She felt a little dazed.

"How?" she asked, as they took seats at the bar.

"His parents said that he had a heart attack," said Johnny, not meeting Emily's eyes. "I'm… I'm sorry."

"Had you seen him?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, a couple of times," Johnny admitted.

"And?" she asked, shaken. "How was he?"

"He was Matthew," said Johnny, which said everything, really. "He was rambling and a little chaotic."

Emily understood what he meant, though he was only hinting. "He was using," she inferred.

"I don't know. Probably." He looked away, and Emily's profiling skills kicked in, over the grief.

She narrowed her eyes. "There's something you're not telling me."

He looked at her, and he seemed to make a decision about something. "The last time I saw him, there was something different." He shook his head. "He was talking crazy, but the…" He faltered for a moment. "The fear. I can't quite explain it, but I know it was real."

That got her attention. "What was he saying?"

"He said, 'Johnny, they're gonna kill me.'"

Emily felt her blood go cold. "Who's they?" she demanded.

Johnny shook his head. "He wouldn't say." He looked away again. "He said they already murdered a guy from Georgetown named Tommy V, and made it look like an accident."

It sounded crazy. "Do you know anyone named Tommy V?"

"No," he said. "Look, he was probably just being paranoid, but with what you do for a living now..."

"Yeah. Yeah." _Absolutely_.

"I mean, you're one of the only people he ever trusted, Emily," said Johnny, unconsciously pouring salt on the wound.

"Okay," she said, and got ready to go.

She couldn't stay here. It was suffocating.

"Okay," she said again, at the door.

"It's probably nothing," he called after her.

 _Probably, but I have to check._

0o0

Penelope, who had been working late, as usual, turned as the doors to the elevator slid open. Emily had called to ask her a favour.

Emily walked out, slowly and obviously soaked to the skin. She looked oddly vulnerable. Tiny alarm bells started going off in the back of Penelope's mind. As usual, when something worried her, she let words tumble out of her mouth without properly consulting her brain.

"My Lord, it's kitties and poodles out there. Did you hear it might even snow?"

"Were you able to find anything on Tommy V?"

Penelope smiled. There were few people on this planet who she couldn't find once she'd set her mind to it. She handed Emily a file. "If by chance you mean Thomas Valentine, age thirty-five, found dead in his home from dehydration, as a matter of fact…" She trailed off, aware of the strange, hollow expression on her friend's face. "What's going on?"

"Is Hotch still here?" Emily asked, rather than explaining.

 _Jinkies, that's not good,_ thought Penelope.

"Pretty sure he lives here," she said aloud.

Emily walked past her, barely raising her gaze. "Thanks Garcia."

0o0

Aaron was pacing, which helped him think. It was easier, on the nights when Jack was with Haley, to work until he was heavy with sleep. It was better than going home to an empty apartment, though when he did, he often took work with him. It wasn't uncommon. Insomnia and leading a unit in the FBI were frequent bedfellows.

He sensed someone come into his room before hearing them, and was surprised to see Prentiss in his doorway, soaked to the skin and looking like her world had ended. He took in her appearance and immediately put down the file he was holding.

"What's wrong?"

She took a moment before answering, the usually tough agent looking strangely vulnerable. "I just found out that an old friend of mine died," she explained quietly.

"I'm sorry," he said, sincerely. "Do you need to take some time?"

His friend shook her head and nodded at the same time, which meant 'yes, but I don't want to, so, no'.

She looked away, obviously trying to stop herself crying. "There's a chance that he could have been murdered," she said, when she met his gaze again. "And there might be a second case."

He nodded. "What do you need?"

"Just some leeway to check it out."

"Of course," he assured her. "Anything."

"Thank you."

She turned to go, but he stopped her. "Emily, if you want to take a few days and let us look into it…"

Prentiss shook her head. "Matthew was incredibly messed up, and I hadn't seen him in a long time," she told him. "But he was important to me."

 _Alright_ , he thought. _She needs to do this._

"At least let us help," he said aloud.

"Thank you," she said, in a voice that was thick and empty at the same time.

0o0

 _He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done._

 _Leonardo da Vinci_

0o0

It was early – the kind of early that boded ill.

They had barely pulled their chairs out at their desks before JJ had ushered them into the situation room, with a curiously intense expression that put Spencer on edge. He'd seen that look before: it meant somehow, someone was yanking their team's chain – or that she had no idea why they had been called in, which was usually the same thing.

Morgan and Prentiss were nowhere to be seen, so Spencer, Rossi and Pearce followed their media liaison up the steps and into the room where Hotch was waiting for them, looking over a couple of files. There weren't copies for everyone, Spencer noted, which was odd. He made a beeline for the coffee, Pearce hot on his heels. He ignored her as much as he politely could, as she started making tea.

"Thanks for coming in early," said Hotch.

"Where's Morgan and Prentiss?" JJ asked at once.

"They're at the morgue examining this man," Hotch told them, passing JJ a file. "Matthew Benton, a friend of Emily's."

There was a beat of silence. Spencer and Pearce's hands stilled on their cups; JJ gave a little gasp; Rossi cleared his throat. Then they all resettled to what they were doing, now on high alert.

"She believes that his death may be connected to that man's," he added, handing another file to Rossi.

Spencer read Matthew Benton's file over JJ's shoulder.

"Thomas Valentine," Rossi read aloud.

" _Shit_."

They all looked up, surprised, as Pearce swore again. "Sorry," she said, in a slightly pained, flustered voice. "Spilled the tea – don't mind me."

She shook her hand out as if it had really scalded her, which it must have, Spencer decided, given how pale she had gone all of a sudden.

 _Shock. It's so early the water is actually still hot._

"Here," he said, moving to help her.

"Thanks. Sorry. Carry on, I'm listening."

"You need the first aid box?" JJ asked, as Spencer helped Pearce mop up the tea.

"No, I'm fine. Butterfingers, that's all."

Spencer narrowed his eyes at her. If he didn't know her better (and that part of him that remembered late nights in her garden, or lazy mornings at the market, or the feel of her lips on his reminded him that actually, he did) he would have described her current manner as desperately pretending nothing was wrong.

But what could have left her so flustered?

She poured herself another tea as Rossi talked about Thomas Valentine's cause of death.

"Dehydration?"

Spencer was only half listening, the rest of his mind working furiously on the problem of the way Pearce's hands were shaking as she stirred her replacement drink. She seemed almost panicked, which was weird, even for her. He tore his gaze away. Whatever it was, he would only make it worse by making his scrutiny too obvious.

 _And it's none of your business_ , he reminded himself firmly.

"Did she know him?" Rossi was asking, as he returned to the table.

It did not escape his notice that Pearce took a little longer, as if she were collecting herself.

"No," said Hotch. "But Benton seemed to think that someone was after both of them."

"Wait, one death was a heart attack, the other was from dehydration," said Spencer, skim reading the autopsy reports. "What's the connection?"

"I don't know if there is one," Hotch admitted.

"Are the police investigating?" JJ asked.

"No."

"But Emily thinks there's something to it?" Pearce asked.

Spencer glanced at her. She was her usual calm, collected self once more.

"Yes," said Hotch. "Right now, we're just helping a colleague.

Rossi nodded, speaking for them all. "So we talk to the families, see if there's anything suspicious."

"Is Emily okay?" JJ asked, voicing the concern they all shared.

Hotch sighed. "I don't know. That's why I sent Morgan to go with her.

0o0

It had all gone south as soon as they had mentioned Prentiss's name, which was immediately odd, as far as Grace was concerned. JJ had told her that Benton's parents had shut down almost violently fast as soon as she had mentioned her. So much so that it had even given Hotch pause. Emily's assurances that it was down to teenage rebellion and her 'bad' influence only went so far. There wasn't a single member of the team who believed that. There had been real hatred in the mother's eyes, JJ said.

It had unnerved her.

But then, there was already a lot of this case to unnerve a person, Grace thought, gazing around the neat, almost spartan bedroom. It was _too_ neat, as if someone was working hard to convince them (or themselves) that everything was fine. Of course, grief could do that to a person, and Thomas's wife was evidently no longer sleeping in the room.

She was also lying through her teeth. Grace just wished she knew why.

"When I came to the house, I found him here, in bed," she said, eyes down, evasive.

"You don't live together?" Reid asked.

"I'd taken the kids to my mom's," she said, without directly telling them that their marriage had been in trouble. "We'd been gone a few weeks. The doctor said he must have been in bed for days."

"May I ask why you took the children somewhere else to live?" Rossi asked, delicately.

"My husband was hearing voices," said his widow with the kind of conviction that scared Grace. "He was cursing God."

Grace turned away from her, trying not to let anything show on her face. There were any number of reasons for a person to believe that about their spouse, but the look in the woman's eyes had been dark and unforgiving. That kind of unthinking, desperate devotion was dangerous.

"I needed to protect them."

 _And now your husband is dead,_ thought Grace.

"Of course," said Rossi.

There was a pause.

"Do you believe in the soul?" she asked.

"I do," said Rossi.

"Well, I believe Tommy's is finally at peace."

Grace shared a glance with Reid. The woman had just admitted to being party to his death, in as many words, absolving herself of any guilt because of her religion. There was something sad but unbelievably smug about it, as if she missed her husband, but felt he had fallen by the wayside, somewhere along their righteous path. She left them to it after that, which was something of a relief.

"What –" Spencer began, but Grace held up a hand in warning.

The three of them waited, still as statues, until Tommy's 'grieving' widow gave up trying to listen at the door, and walked away.

"So he was murdered," said Grace quietly, when the woman's footsteps had faded away.

"I don't think we can prove that," said Rossi.

"C'mon, man, she practically admitted something had happened," said Reid.

"Something," said Rossi diplomatically, "is not murder."

"Aiding and abetting," said Grace, her eyes on the floor around the feet of the bed. "Look," she said, pointing. "There was a struggle here – and there," she tapped the scored metal bedframe with her finger.

"Rope marks?" Reid asked, following her gaze.

"Someone was restrained here," said Grace, feeling sick.

 _And I think I know why_. _I've seen this before._

"Doesn't mean the wife had anything to do with it," said Rossi, and both agents turned to glare at him.

"I know you're playing devil's advocate, but…" Grace remarked, aware of her own poor taste in expression.

"Alright, agreed," said Rossi. "Something happened here – and she knew to get her children out of the way in advance."

"If she knew in advance and didn't try to stop it, that's conspiracy," Spencer mused.

"I've seen this before," said Grace aloud.

"Where?" Rossi asked, curious.

"London."

 _It was Simon's case,_ she remembered, and continued with difficulty.

"We had a series of deaths that looked like accidents or natural causes, but each victim was found in bed, scuff marks under the bed posts, evidence that they had been restrained. My team…"

It pained her to think about that time.

"My team was brought it when no one else could figure it out."

 _As usual,_ she thought grumpily _._

"And what was it?"

Grace looked up at them both and traced the shape of a cross in the air. "Sin."

0o0

"We saw scuffmarks on the floor underneath Thomas Valentine's bed," said Dave. "Almost as if someone had been tied up and struggled to get free."

"We saw the exact same marks in Matthew's bedroom," JJ added.

"Pearce has a theory," said Reid, nudging her arm.

Aaron got the sense they had been arguing about this.

She sent him a dark look. "It has precedence."

Aaron narrowed his eyes. "What does?"

The look she gave him told him that he wasn't going to like this one bit.

"You aren't going to like it," she said, confirming his suspicions.

He gave her a Look.

"Scuffmarks around the bed, the incense Benton's family burned to 'cleanse' the room, deaths that could be attributed to extreme physical distress, deeply religious family members…" she sighed, as if she would rather this be an ordinary kind of serial killer. "I think we have a rogue exorcist."

There was a brief silence, as there often was when Pearce said something that sounded a bit insane.

 _She was right,_ he thought fleetingly. _I don't like it._

"Has anybody been able to find any connection at all between Benton and Valentine?" he asked, neither supporting her supposition nor disagreeing with it.

"According to my snooping, both Matthew Benton and Thomas Valentine travelled to Galicia, Spain, over the same week, four months ago," Garcia announced, joining them.

"That mean anythin' to you?" Morgan asked Emily.

"No."

"I did the quick guidebook thing," said Garcia. "There's a church there, Santiago de Compostela. It's visited by over a hundred thousand religious pilgrims every year."

"It's been a site of pilgrimage for centuries," said Grace, and suddenly her smile seemed a little warmer. "I went when I was little. Dad took me. There's a handprint on the stone of the church worn away by the placing of thousands of pilgrims' hands."

She stopped talking, probably aware that people were giving her the look they usually reserved for Reid.

In a curious reverse of the normal rules of their team's operation, it was Reid who brought them back to the point. "Did his parents say anything about him going on a pilgrimage?"

"No, the opposite, actually," said JJ. "His mom said his soul was possessed by evil…" She trailed off and frowned in Grace's direction.

"Yeah," Emily scoffed.

"What?" JJ asked.

"Matthew had a thing about challenging the church," she explained. "He could push it. When we were in high school, his mom and dad consulted a priest because they were afraid he was possessed."

She, too, glanced in Pearce's direction.

The British agent was simply listening to the conversation now, as if she had already made her mind up and would attempt to deal with it on her own if she had to. For a moment, Aaron wondered whether she ever had done something like that without consulting him.

"But I think, in this case, she was talking about drugs," he put in, trying to steer them gently away from the mad world Pearce appeared to inhabit for as long as was humanly possible.

"Are you sure?" Rossi asked. "There's a pattern here, as crazy as it sounds. The talk about evil and the soul." He nodded at Pearce. "The scuffmarks, the incense."

With the strange patience of someone who knows they're right and doesn't want to be, Pearce nodded. Resigned, Aaron gestured for Dave to keep talking.

"Drug addiction and schizophrenia are two afflictions most likely to present as demonic possession," he commented.

"If demonic possession is what you're bent on finding," Pearce put in.

"You cannot be serious," said Morgan.

"I think it begs the question." Dave shrugged. "And if there's a precedent, it can't hurt to look into it."

Was it Aaron's imagination, or had Pearce gone marginally paler at that?

"It'll take me two shakes," said Garcia, but Aaron shook his head.

"Pearce worked that case, she can reach out to her old team," he glanced at Garcia's mild dismay and guessed he had wounded her pride. "It'll limit the amount of red tape we need to cut through. I want you to find out everything you can about that trip to Spain."

He wanted to keep the rest of the team away from the reality of her old team, if he could, and he didn't like to think what might be in those reports. Pearce would likely know where a 'clean' version could be found.

Garcia nodded, mollified; Pearce nodded too, when he glanced in her direction.

"Look, I know the bible as well as anyone," said Morgan, in a voice that suggested he didn't believe where this was going at all. "But I also know there's nothing more open to behavioural interpretation than religion."

"Meaning what?" Prentiss asked, not looking at him.

"I think it's dangerous for us to want to find a connection between these deaths."

It was a reasonable point, but Prentiss wasn't in the mood for reason, particularly with two and a half members of the team already invested in the exorcism angle (Aaron himself was still unconvinced).

"Was Thomas' wife religious?" she asked.

"You can say that again," said Pearce quietly, then winced, as if Reid had kicked her under the table.

Based on his slightly furtive expression and her subsequent glare, Aaron suspected that he had.

"She was concerned that he'd been cursing God," Dave explained.

"Exorcism rituals can take days to complete," said Reid. "It's possible the stress induced could cause a heart attack, especially in someone with a history of drug use."

"That would explain the timeline of someone dying of dehydration," JJ put in, frowning.

"Guys, look – I'm willing to say that we might have an unsub who ritualises killings as if they were exorcisms, maybe," Morgan argued. "But, right now, we don't even know if we have a crime yet."

"That's true," said Grace, unexpectedly. "There are other reasons the floorboards beneath a bed might get scuffed. But you didn't see that woman's eyes."

Reid nodded. "She said she believed that her husband was 'finally at peace'," Reid told them. "Pearce's right. The way she looked after she said it – it was chilling."

There was a brief silence.

"Morgan is right. We need to step back," said Rossi. "Let me talk to someone before we all start telling ghost stories."

Across the table, Pearce tilted her head to one side and fixed the older agent with a speaking look. "Can I come?"


	19. Enter, Pilgrim

**Essential listening: These Bones, by Dashboard Confessional**

0o0

"I promise you won't burst into flames as soon as you walk through the door."

Grace couldn't help but laugh. She and Rossi had been discussing religion since they had left the office, which – despite their errand and the rather grim reason for it – had made quite a pleasant change from their usual topics of conversation.

"I have no problem with the church," she said, as they started up the steps. "It's just that religion is one of those things that is a form of state control, and that makes my feet itch."

Rossi chuckled. "Faith is what you make it."

"Yes," she agreed. "Faith can be beautiful and peaceful and supportive. But where people break from those artificial measures of control you get other people who believe so hard and so deeply, and who are already flawed in their own ways, that they perceive personal choices that don't affect anyone else as a threat to their entire worldview."

"And then you get something like rogue exorcists," he followed. "How did you catch them last time?"

"Good, old-fashioned police work," she said, which was true. "I think I interviewed nearly every member of the clergy in Greater London."

"Let's hope Garcia can speed things up here, if it comes to that."

Grace nodded and followed him through the large, wooden doors. The church was of a sensible inner-city construction that she had not often seen in England, but which appeared to be everywhere in America: large and imposing, not too ornate, but not too plain, with stone steps leading up to the double doors. The inside had the same mix of plain and ornate: simple, cream walls and stunning stained glass depicting saints in pseudo-medieval situations, likely paid for by successful members of the congregation. It had a pleasant, peaceful feel to it.

A priest was polishing the silver offering cup by the altar, humming under his breath. Rossi quickened his steps.

"You know, they count all that stuff, Jimmy," he said, with a smirk.

Grace smiled. He had said on the drive over that he and Father Davison went way back.

The priest looked up, his white hair glinting in the light from the stained glass windows behind him, and chuckled. "Hey stranger!" he said, evidently pleased to see Rossi.

"I know," said his old friend, pre-emptively. "It's been too long."

"So, maybe after we speak, you'll let me take your confession?" Jimmy asked, with a knowing grin.

"You gonna strong-arm me?" Rossi asked, as the two men hugged.

"You bet," said Jimmy, and Grace guessed that this easy-going nature was why Rossi liked him.

"This is Grace Pearce – a colleague at Quantico," said Rossi, as Jimmy's eyes flicked over her.

"Hi," she said, shaking his hand. "You have a beautiful church here."

"Thank you," said Jimmy with a grin. "We try. I hope this old reprobate hasn't importuned you." He winked at her and turned back to Rossi. "Don't tell me you're introducing Agent Pearce to me as your fifth wife?"

All three of them burst out laughing.

"No," said Rossi, with feigned exasperation. "No, I need your expertise – she volunteered to come with."

Jimmy frowned, looking from one agent to the other. "The FBI is in need of spiritual help?"

"Not so much," said Grace, politely. "Let's just say we know someone else who might."

Jimmy nodded, probably assuming they meant an unsub – which they sort of did. "So, how can I help you?"

"What do you know about exorcisms?"

Grace drew aside a little, allowing the two men the space to talk. Jimmy was more likely to be open with his old friend than with her, anyway. There was a stand for tea lights to be lit off to the right of the aisle, so she headed for that. The acoustics of the church were such that she could still hear them.

Jimmy gave Rossi a look. "Well, they're controversial," he said, carefully. "The Vatican issued a new exorcism rite in 1999," he continued, inviting Rossi to take a seat in the pews. "So nobody speaks out against it."

 _A telling arrangement of words,_ Grace thought, tucking a few dollars in the collection box beside the candles.

"But, if pressed, not every priest believes in demonic possessions."

"Do you?"

"Let me put it this way," said Father Davison, in the manner of a man who regularly asked himself this sort of question. "Do you believe that evil exists?"

 _Yes_ , thought Grace, picking out three tea lights from the box on the stand. _But not specifically the kind I've read about in the bible._

"I've seen it," said Rossi.

"So, if children are born innocent, at what point does evil enter them?"

 _When we create it in them, usually,_ Grace thought.

She watched as Rossi and Jimmy shared a smile that said neither was entirely comfortable with that argument. Grace wondered whether Jimmy had seen some of the things she had. Magic and the church weren't as mutually exclusive as some people liked to believe, after all. She had known at least five churches in Greater London that acted as safe havens for more unusual parishioners of various denominations.

She put three candles on the stand, one for each of her parents and one for Michael.

"How common are exorcisms?" Rossi asked, in the pews.

"Conservatively, I'd say four-hundred or five-hundred a year, worldwide."

"Has anyone died in one?"

Jimmy put his head to one side. "What's this about, Davey?"

Grace felt her mouth twist into a smile. _Davey?_

She paused with her hand outstretched over the candles, decided that this may be construed as impolite and reached for the matches.

"We're looking into the deaths of two men," Rossi explained. "Both were troubled."

Neither she nor Rossi missed that Father Davison had not said 'no'.

"Each recently had made a pilgrimage to Galicia, Spain," Rossi continued. "Each died within the last two weeks."

"And why do you suspect exorcism?"

"Well, it's just a theory," said Rossi, carefully. "One of our agents knew one of the men. She was afraid there might be some foul play."

Grace felt Father Davison's eyes flick in her direction. She smiled and shook her head. "Not me."

"And you agree?" Jimmy asked, nodding in acknowledgment.

"Would you know if one took place here in DC?" Rossi asked, in lieu of an answer.

"Well, if it's sanctioned, probably," said Jimmy, which opened up a whole new range of possibilities.

"And if not?" Grace asked.

"Well, then, it's not a true exorcism," he told them.

They nodded and Rossi shook Jimmy's hand, recognising that this was all the information they would be able to get without more solid proof of wrongdoing.

"It was nice you meet you, Agent Pearce," said the priest, warmly. "You'd be welcome to join us at a service."

"Thank you," she said, smiling.

The look in his eye told her they were both aware of how unlikely that event would be, but it was nice of him to offer.

"Davey, the agent – did the information about the case come to her directly?" Jimmy asked, as they turned to leave.

Rossi frowned. "Why?"

"You open yourselves up to understanding the worst monsters and you invite evil into your lives," he said. "It's a vulnerable position."

 _He's right,_ thought Grace. _Ours is a perilous occupation for creatures of good heart._

Grace nodded, but Rossi didn't.

"Meaning what?" he asked.

"Take good care of her – and of yourselves."

"Always do," he said.

Grace gave the father a little wave, glimpsing the silent, amused benediction he bestowed on Rossi as he walked away.

"He seems like a good soul," she said, as they reached the doors.

She stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat to keep them warmer.

"Yeah, he's a good one."

They walked in silence for a few minutes, digesting what he had told them. Grace glanced at her friend.

"Hey, Rossi?" she asked, as they reached the car.

"What?"

"Fifth wife?"

He glared at her, which would have been much more convincing if he hadn't also been grinning. "Quiet, you."

She shrugged and slipped into the passenger seat of the SUV. "Whatever you say, _Davey_."

0o0

Emily was already there when they pulled up to the kerb. The line of police tape had cordoned off a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, where something distinctly awful had happened to a young man – a young man who had recently returned from Santiago de Compostella.

 _She looks pale,_ Grace thought, and hoped the thought didn't show on her face.

Emily had enough to worry about without members of her team watching her every move.

"Garcia got a call," she said, as Grace, Reid and Morgan joined her in front of the house. "Thirty-eight year old white male found dead in his bed by his fiancée."

"What's the connection?" Reid asked, as the four of them made their way up the steps and into the house.

"She ran the name," said Emily. "Patrick Cavanaugh was in Galicia, Spain, the same week as Thomas Valentine and Matthew."

"Do you know him?" asked Morgan, shooting her a low look.

"No. Hey, FBI," she said, flashing her ID at the cop on the door.

"Seriously?" asked the officer, looking them all up and down.

"Yeah, what can you tell us?"

"White male, been dead for hours," he told them, standing up just a little bit straighter than before. "Medics think it was a brain aneurysm."

"You mind if we take a look at the scene?" Morgan asked.

"Knock yourselves out," said the officer, wearing an expression that expressed both his surprise that they were interest and wonder at what he might have missed to call four agents from an organisation he'd only seen on TV to a scene.

The scent of the incense hit her as soon as they turned into the hallway outside the man's bedroom. Inside, the same scratch marks as before were both on the bed frame and below it.

"Signs of a struggle," Grace mused, taking a picture with her phone.

"This is kind of starting to freak me out a little bit," Reid reflected, his eyes on the deep scores in the wooden floor.

"It's like something out of a modern Penny Dreadful," said Grace.

"Tch-yeah."

"Let's figure out if we have a crime before we start freaking out," said Morgan, ever the kind of pedantry, earning himself three eye rolls.

"Morgan," Grace said, in a warning tone.

"Obviously, we have a crime," said Emily.

"Prentiss, how does an unsub induce an aneurysm?" he argued.

"I can think of a few ways," said Grace, fixing her friend with a glare that told him arguing with Emily wasn't going to help any right now. "Chemically, for example."

"Could be caused by stress," Reid chimed in, a similar expression on his face.

"Yeah, like if you were restrained on a bed while someone tried to banish the devil from your body," Emily retorted.

Grace felt herself frown minutely. She was in deep on this one. It wouldn't do to push her too far – not at a crime scene. For a moment she missed Nightingale intensely. He would have known what to do – and how to phrase the nature of their investigation without someone with a mind like Morgan's (rooted so firmly in a reality without magic) instinctively disbelieving them.

Morgan looked away. "All I'm saying is I think we should go easy," he said, picking up on Emily's prickly tone.

Grace felt a tap on her arm and turned to find Reid nodding at a mass of half-burned candles fixed to the sideboard, their wax pooling at their bases.

'Dribbly candles?' he mouthed, and she found herself fighting laughter.

 _What is wrong with me?_ she thought, and nodded, though he had caught the quirk of her mouth and was currently biting the inside of his own cheek.

If arguing with Emily wouldn't help, bursting into giggles in a crime scene that was eerily like her friend's wouldn't either.

"Can I help you?"

The four of them whirled to find a well-dressed, tired looking woman watching them warily from the doorway.

"Oh, excuse us, ma'am," said Grace, pulling out her ID.

She knew the look of the recently widowed when she saw it.

"We're with the FBI," said Morgan, automatically taking point as Grace flashed her badge.

"We're investigating a series of unexplained deaths," Reid added, respectfully.

"I don't understand," she said, and something about her eyes said she wasn't just puzzled. She was scared – of them.

"Had Patrick been acting erratically lately?" Emily asked.

Grace's eyes slid towards her friend. That was not the way to talk to the recently bereaved – even a recently bereaved suspect – particularly without proper introductions.

"He had a brain condition," said Patrick's fiancée, as if she had been rehearsing it all day. "He was getting headaches. Wasn't acting like himself."

Grace exchanged a look with Reid. _Same as the others._

"Were you aware of a trip he took recently to Galicia, Spain?" Emily asked.

"There's a church there called Santiago de Compostela," said Reid, on her obvious confusion. "We think he might have visited."

They all saw the blankness that slid up the woman's face as she denied all knowledge of her fiancé's activities.

 _Protecting herself,_ Grace realised.

"With all due respect, ma'am, I don't think you're telling us the truth," Emily told her.

The woman stared at Emily, dumbfounded. "Excuse me?"

Grace, who was nearest, gave her shin a warning kick, glad that their legs were concealed behind the bed. Emily ignored her.

"Did you believe Patrick was possessed?" she asked, relentlessly.

She shifted slightly, effectively taking herself out of Grace's range.

"I'd like some privacy, please," said the woman, appealing to Morgan as Emily approached.

"Was someone trying to rid him of demons? Is that how he died?"

"Emily," said Grace, but quietly – they didn't want to be seen to be undermining her.

If they kept up a united front they might get a telling off, but if they made a move to contradict her openly, it might give someone higher up ammunition for an official censure. And that was the last thing Emily needed.

"No!" spat Cavanaugh's fiancée.

"Do you really believe he had a brain condition?"

"Emily," Morgan snapped.

They had to stop this – and quickly. Grace cast around for something to seize on as a distraction while Emily descended into angry-bad-cop mode.

"You need to go now," said the woman angrily.

"Because if you sanctioned an exorcism and he died, I can press to make you an accessory to murder," said Emily, doggedly.

"Emily, Emily – that is enough," said Morgan, grabbing her arm.

She opened her mouth to carry on, pulling her arm out of Morgan's grasp, but was interrupted by the door at the end of the hall slamming with sufficient force to make them all jump.

"Ma'am, we should go see what that was," said Grace, moving swiftly forward, taking her arm and bustling her out of the room. They made it into the kitchen (where the door had slammed hard enough to take off the plaster around it) and she made a show of investigating each window in turn, hoping that the boys had got Emily out of the house and into and SUV.

"Patrick had a brain condition," the woman said again, once she and Grace (and the officer on the door) had commented on how strange it was that the door had slammed like that.

Grace gave her a long look. "I expect he did," she said, recalling how the colour had drained from her face when Emily had threatened her. "We'll be able to check in the autopsy report."

The woman swallowed.

"Look, if you can think of anything, give me a call," she said, pressing a card into the reluctant woman's hand. "And if you get wind of anything that suggests your fiancé was harmed in any way, please let us know. Tracking down murderers is what we do." Certain, now, that the hunted look in the woman's eyes wasn't her imagination, she gave her a grim smile. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Reid was waiting for her outside.

"Morgan took Prentiss back to the office," he told her.

Grace relaxed slightly. "Well, I'm glad I'm not in that car," she said, and Reid nodded.

He held up the keys of the Yuke they had arrived in and tossed them over, on her nod.

"She's definitely hiding something, that one," she said, as they crossed the street.

"An exorcist, though?" He pulled a face.

"We've seen weirder." She shrugged. " _I've_ definitely seen weirder."

"Do you think she'll call?"

Reid was looking back at the house and Grace guessed the woman was watching them leave. She took her time opening the door, making it look like their conversation was deeply serious – and that she was in big trouble.

"Emily put the fear of God in her, so maybe," she said, and watched as Reid's eyes flicked to hers. "No pun intended."

He nodded, resting one arm on the roof of the car. He pursed his lips and Grace saw a glint of the mischief she seldom saw these days flash across his face.

"Sure was lucky that door slammed when it did," he said slowly, watching her expression.

She gave him a small smile; an acknowledgement of guilt. "Yeah. Lucky."

He narrowed his eyes, but Grace was already getting in. It was a few moments before he followed suit, and Grace had a strong suspicion he was rearranging his expression to stop himself laughing openly.

"You're incorrigible," he accused, pulling on his seatbelt.

"So I'm told," she said, making sure Cavanaugh's fiancée saw them look over at her as they pulled away.

0o0

Although they had left as much as fifteen minutes after Morgan and Prentiss, the two of them were still in the parking garage when he and Pearce pulled in and signed their car back over, in the midst of such a blazing row about protocol and priorities that neither of them noticed their colleagues' presence, even when they were standing three feet away, feeling awkward.

"Kind of gives you a perspective on what a pain in the arse we are when we fall out," said Pearce, in an undertone, and Spencer nodded.

He had been thinking the same thing. He glanced across the garage, where several other agents were beginning to trickle over, recognising street theatre when they saw it.

He cleared his throat. "Guys."

They ignored him, and he glanced at Pearce, who shrugged. "Hey, guys?" she said, slightly louder.

"Guys!" Spencer tried again, but neither Morgan nor Prentiss gave them a blind bit of notice – until Pearce stuck two fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill whistle that made him wince.

" _What?_ " Prentiss demanded, glaring at them for intruding.

"Uh, you're kinda attracting an audience," said Spencer, apologetically. He nodded to the other agents, who – on Pearce's whistle – had all suddenly started pretending to mind their own business and find other places to be.

Prentiss looked mildly abashed, though still furious, and stalked towards the elevator. Morgan gave them both a slightly helpless shrug and Spencer guessed he had been doing his best not to be drawn into an argument. He tried to give his friend a smile to say it would all have blown over in a couple of days, but it was probably more like a grimace.

In the elevator, in an effort to break the stormy silence, Pearce said, "She was definitely hiding something." Morgan threw her a withering look, but she glared him down. "I know we need evidence, but there's a suggestive pattern here we can't ignore."

"Exactly," said Emily, in a much quieter voice. "I can't let this happen again."

" _We_ won't let this happen again," Pearce corrected, and Prentiss sent her a grateful look.

"Playing at peacemaker now?" Spencer whispered in her ear, as three more agents got in on the third floor and Morgan and Emily threw dirty looks at one another across the car.

"Well, they tried to with us," she murmured. "It's only fair we take turns."

They shared a slightly guilty smile.

Spencer frowned to himself as the other agents got out on Fraud and the BAU agents arranged themselves again (Emily in something of a fighting stance, he noted), thinking about what JJ had said about keeping Pearce at arm's length.

 _It's for the best,_ he told himself, though less firmly than he might have before, dismissing the sudden warmth he had felt at the way the corner of her mouth had quirked up.

The door opened on their floor and all four agents spent half a moment collecting themselves in the face of Hotch standing outside the elevator, his arms crossed, glaring at them. If his father had been around when he was a teenager (and Spencer had been the kind of kid to go to parties, stay out too late and get caught), he could have imagined his father wearing exactly the same look as Hotch presently was. The only thing missing was him tapping one foot in annoyance.

"What happened?" Hotch asked, darkly.

"We think there may be a third victim," said Spencer briskly, trying to imitate the way Pearce took charge of a situation before either Prentiss or Morgan could speak.

He felt her eyes on him for a moment, but he forced himself not to look.

"And his fiancée is hiding something," she said, backing him up. "She went as white a sheet when we asked if there was anything suspicious."

"Is that what you think?" Hotch asked Morgan, who looked decidedly unconvinced.

Fleetingly, Spencer wondered whether their boss had heard about the argument in the parking garage already. It was possible. Gossip travelled at the speed of lightning in Quantico.

"I don't know," said Morgan, and Prentiss openly scowled at him.

"We have ligature marks, the Spain connection, and scuffmarks under the bed," she insisted.

"Hotch, it's weird, definitely," said Morgan, almost placatingly. "But there's no way to physically connect dehydration, a heart attack and an aneurysm."

"Bet you half a dollar?" said Pearce, not quite quietly enough to go unheard.

Hotch transferred his steely gaze to her.

"They're all consistent with prolonged physical stress, particularly given the victims' medical histories."

"Oh, come on – their medical histories mean they could have died at any time," Morgan disputed, losing his temper a little. "They aren't victims, they just died."

"Oh, what? All within days of each other, three weeks after taking the same trip to the same city in Spain?" Prentiss countered.

"That's enough," said Hotch, in a manner that brooked no argument. They fell silent.

Spencer frowned, taking in his expression. "What's going on?" he asked, concerned.

"Well, we've had a complaint."

"That was fast," said Pearce, but Hotch ignored her.

"JJ's trying to smooth it over with the DC police, but we haven't been invited in on the case."

Spencer winced. _That's not good_.

Hotch walked off, leaving them staring after him.

"Hey, that's how you have my back?" Prentiss asked, giving Morgan a light smack to his arm.

"Prentiss, I'm tryin' to protect you."

"I don't need protection."

Pearce rolled her eyes and headed to her desk, attempting to leave the second act of a spectacular argument behind; Spencer followed her. Hotch was waiting by their desks, Not Watching Morgan and Prentiss.

"Is Prentiss okay?" he asked, in an undertone.

Spencer shared a look with Pearce. At the same moment, they both said 'Yes', which probably told Hotch all he needed to know. He nodded.

They both expected him to move away at that, but he didn't. Instead, he tapped his finger against the top envelope on Pearce's in-tray.

"Admin dropped this off," he said, giving her a pointed look.

Spencer, who was in the middle of taking his coat off, frowned. He didn't miss Pearce's raised eyebrow.

"From London?" she asked, and Hotch nodded.

"You might want to read it through before presenting it to the team," he advised, then glanced at Spencer, who guessed that their boss was now privy to a good deal more about Pearce's passed than she had ever wanted to tell him.

Both her eyebrows disappeared behind her fringe at this, but she nodded.

"Hey, Hotch?" she asked, as he turned to head to his office. She waited for him to look back before asking, "How long were you standing there, waiting?"

Her voice was five parts innocence and one part bare-faced cheek, and Spencer had to clamp his mouth firmly shut not to respond immediately. He glanced at Hotch, then swallowed.

 _You are playing with an active volcano,_ he thought, and fought the urge to sidle away.

Hotch gave her the kind of look that would have sent junior agents scattering (possibly Spencer included), but she simply grinned at him. Their unit chief shook his head and stalked away.

The grin faded when he had gone. "Emily's right," she said, reaching for the file. "But we have to tread lightly here – our theory sounds mental and people will take advantage of that."

"Like Cavanaugh's fiancée," he guessed.

She nodded, tearing open the envelope.

Spencer glanced over his shoulder towards Hotch's office. Not for the first time, he felt the need to ask Pearce just how much she had told their boss about her less traditional skills – and her past – but when he turned back she was wearing a cold, pensive sort of expression that drove the thought from his mind.

"What is it?" he asked, moving to her side.

"Just memories," she said, and visibly shook herself. She put the file down and shrugged her jacket off, but since she didn't make a move to shoo him away, Spencer lingered.

"You know," she said, after flicking through the first few pages. "This is all done on collar number, which means it's the 'clean' version for the central records."

There was a tightness around her mouth and eyes when she spoke that Spencer didn't like at all. Perhaps the file was reminding her of the life she had left behind; perhaps it was reminding her of her son. He didn't know, but it made him slightly unsettled all the same.

She took such care over concealing events in London, so it was completely unexpected when she looked up at him and said, "Actually, you should probably read this."

"Me?" he asked, surprised. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she replied, though he wasn't certain she meant it. "You read a lot faster than me, and you know about –" She glanced around to ensure there were no eavesdroppers. Fortunately, Prentiss and Morgan were still growling at one another by the door. "You know how unusual my old unit was. Just tell me if there's anything I shouldn't be sharing with a wider audience."

"Uh… okay," he agreed, taking the sheaf of papers from her, aware of what a wrench it must be for her to trust someone else with it.

He got the impression she didn't want to let the file out of her sight until she knew it wouldn't cause her problems, so he dragged his chair across to her desk.

"Which one are you?" he asked absently, his eyes flicking back and forth across the page, absorbing the words and pausing every so often at the slightly bizarre operational language favoured by the London Metropolitan Police.

"74MD RC," she said, pointing to what had to be her old identification number. "Cross Bones is weird," she added, as if she wanted to keep talking – and avoid too much thinking. "Most boroughs have Sergeants listed under three numbers, except Westminster, which is huge, but we got two because our unit predated the modern numbering system. And we're tiny."

Spencer frowned and stopped reading. "I thought your station was relatively new," he said.

"Well, we moved there in the forties, after the music school shifted to a larger site," she told him, "but the unit itself is an older entity." She frowned. "A very old entity."

"What do the letters mean?" he asked, returning to his task.

"Borough and station – they designated the panda car identification, too, for them that have them. MD is Southwark – and RC was Cross Bones. It's on Redcross Way." She frowned again; he could hear it in her voice when she continued, "Though again, most units don't have that second designation."

"I guess once you guys were on a case other units remembered you," he mused, thinking of the sightless eyes of a woman who was definitely dead staring at him across a bedroom.

"Mmm."

"Okay, you're 74MD RC – who's 51?"

"Geoff," she said at once. "Career Sergeant. Great bloke, actually. Been with us for yonks."

"73?"

"Sophie. We came up through training together."

"76?"

She folded her arms almost reflexively. "Just another member of the team," she snapped. "Is this important?"

"Um, no – I – uh, I guess not," he said, surprised. "I was just thinking – in case we need to contact them –"

"You can go through me," she said, and made it sound so final he didn't dare look up again until he'd finished.

"Should be okay," he said, handing it over. "Seems pretty bereft of weirdness, considering the case."

He caught her eye, then, and saw the same haunted, hunted look Cavanaugh's fiancée had been wearing.

 _This has you rattled_ , he thought. _Badly rattled._

She must have read something of his concern in his face because she looked away. "Sorry for snapping," she said. "I'm just worried about Emily."

 _Liar_ , he thought, but didn't feel particularly wounded by the fact she felt the need to. It wasn't like they were close. Not anymore.

"It's fine," he said, aware that it probably wasn't, and watched her head up the steps to Hotch's office.

Spencer moved his chair back to his own desk, thoughtfully.

 _76MD RC…_

He turned the identification tag over in his mind. A glance at the door told him Prentiss and Morgan wouldn't be at their desks any time soon; he eyed his computer terminal, wondering whether he had time to do some digging. He had got as far as typing in the first digit when Pearce came back and he balked, ducking his head and quickly opening his email instead, hoping she hadn't noticed.


	20. The Gentle and the Just

**Essential listening: Colors, by Halsey**

0o0

"As far as the police are concerned, there _is_ no open murder investigation," said JJ.

Hotch didn't immediately respond. His eyes were fixed on the bullpen, where Emily was talking uncomfortably with a civilian. JJ followed his gaze. Just behind her, Spence was trying not to engage with a reticent and grumpy looking Grace, while Morgan was still silently fuming at his desk. It was one of these days when JJ was grateful to have an office separate from all of it.

"We have no reason to be investigating if they're not," she added, giving Rossi – who was sitting by Hotch's desk – a grim look.

"Well, they're right," said Hotch, softly, taking a seat. "All we have are three men who died three very different natural deaths."

"So we just drop it?" Rossi asked.

"Dave, we don't have a choice," said Hotch, clearly frustrated. "Do you really believe we're dealing with someone trying to exorcise demons?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe," he replied. "Possession, mental illness, exorcist, unsub – who cares what's true. People are dying. This isn't about religion, it's about evil. We attack it with analysis and diligence. For this unsub it's a fight to the death."

Hotch sighed and sat back in his chair. JJ watched his eyes go to a file on the edge of his desk.

They looked up when Garcia knocked and came in without waiting. "All hail the mistress of information."

"You got something?" JJ asked, hoping that they would be able to put something together – at least for Emily's sake.

"Oh, you know I do," she said, handing copies of the print out to all three of them. "It's a posting to a web bulletin board by Matthew Benton to create a support group for people who felt betrayed by their faith."

"Well, that helps explain how these three men came together," said Hotch, looking mildly relieved that there might be substance to all this after all.

"It gets better," said Garcia, sounding uncomfortable. "The week the three of them were in Spain, the services at Santiago de Compostela were cancelled when the priest there died."

The technical analyst looked sufficiently worried for Rossi to frown up at her. "Died how?" he asked.

"Heart attack," she replied. "But if you listen to the conspiracy chatter, there is a strong belief he was killed to interrupt services during the height of the pilgrimage."

JJ felt her mouth fall open. It was like something out of a thriller. "How?" she asked.

"Well, their best guess is some kinda gas," she told them. "Sarin or VX, something that wouldn't show up in an autopsy. But it could be anything that would induce stress, cause a heart attack."

"Then we have a motive," said JJ.

"And a potential MO – an eye for an eye," Rossi added.

Hotch shook his head. "Without an invitation from the police, I cannot authorise and investigation." He glanced at the door. "This has to be kept quiet."

JJ smiled.

He pushed the file on the edge of his desk closer to Rossi. "This is the report Pearce dug up from the case in London. It looks like there's a similar MO. See what you think."

"I could contact the officers who made the arrest," Garcia suggested.

"Uh, Pearce told me the arresting officer is unavailable, and likely to remain so," said Hotch, which made JJ frown.

 _What a weird way of putting it,_ she thought.

"She was the secondary officer – anything we need to know, we can ask her. I can't risk anyone realising we're looking into this," he added, as a consolation to Garcia, who looked mildly put out.

0o0

Dave left Aaron's office with a plan, and an unofficial sanction, which was more than they had had when he'd walked in. None of the team would readily sit by while one of them was hurting (even Morgan's argumentativeness was born of deep affection), but of all of them Dave was the least likely to care about being fired if he did something about it. He'd had a reputation as a maverick in the department long before leaving to work on his writing career and if he did get tossed out he could always go back to his books full-time. Hell, he could probably use the publicity to set up a lecture tour.

Emily was still talking to the man who had come in to see her. He looked about as stressed as she did and Dave guessed he was another old friend – the one who had brought the case to her attention, perhaps.

He came up just as Emily was trying to assure him that she was taking him seriously. "You're gonna have to give me some time here." She glanced over and saw him coming. "David Rossi, this is John Cooley," she said, looking mildly relieved to see him. "He was also a friend of Matthew's."

Dave nodded and shook his hand. "I'm sorry. You saw him recently?"

There was no point beating around the bush. Apart from anything else, this man was as committed to finding Matthew Valentine's killer as Emily.

"Yeah."

"Is there anyone he associated with out of the usual?" Dave asked. "Anyone overtly religious?"

"Not that I'm aware of." He sighed. "I've been doing my best to retrace his steps, but I still haven't come up with anything."

Rossi nodded. Evidently, Cooley was carrying out his own investigation. He looked at Emily. He needed to know where she stood, too. "Buy you a cup of coffee?" he asked, and she narrowed her eyes.

Although grabbing a coffee wasn't an unusual thing to do amongst the team, it was an unusual time for it, and given the circumstances he trusted her to read between the lines.

"Yeah." She grabbed her coat and then looked at Cooley. There was something hunted in her expression that Dave tried not to look like he'd noticed. "I will call you if I hear anything."

"Yeah."

0o0

"There are nicer places to take a girl for coffee," Emily remarked, as they both stamped their feet in the caged off waste ground that had once been a house. It had been a bit of a drive out, but he felt she needed the headspace.

She was right, but they needed somewhere they would not be overheard, and some habits Dave had cultivated in his misspent youth he couldn't quite shake. When you needed to be clandestine, this was the kind of place to seek out.

"Did you ever see _The Exorcist_?" he asked, without preamble.

She tipped her head marginally to one side and huffed. That was her tell. But he wasn't here to push her buttons.

"Yeah."

"The real case started right here," he told her, watching her glance around. "The fire department actually burned down the house themselves." He let that sink in.

Fleetingly, he wondered what JJ and Grace would make of his absolute belief in this case, given his usual scorn for anything paranormal. On another day he might have laughed. But then, it wasn't the demons he believed in, only the propensity for human evil.

"The authorities referred to the boy as Robbie Doe. He's still in the DC area today."

"Why did you bring me here?" Emily asked.

"Whole lot of effort went into destroy the house of a kid who probably had onset schizophrenia or Tourette syndrome," he told her, by way of explanation.

"I'm not following you," she said, though he thought she probably was – she just didn't want to.

"You're sure he was murdered," he said, as gently as he could. "So, what's the story?"

She sighed and turned away, walking listlessly around the lot, kicking at the ground up masonry on the ground.

"If you don't want to explain, that's fine," he said simply. "But if you do, I'm all in."

She stopped a few feet away and turned to face him, though she didn't meet his gaze. "Matthew knew the Bible inside and out, and he started to question everything," she said heavily.

 _The truth, but none of the detail_ , Dave thought. _Our team is a collection of functioning wrecks._

"Why?" he prompted.

She wavered for a moment, shaking her head, and when she spoke her voice was hesitant and thick with emotion.

"We moved around a lot when I was a kid, 'cause of my mom's postings."

 _She was an embassy brat,_ Dave recalled.

"It was hard to get accepted. And when you're fifteen, that's all you want."

Her words were coming out staccato and brisk, full of pain and a healthy amount of self-loathing.

"You'll do almost anything."

"You got pregnant," Dave inferred.

She glanced in his direction. "Yeah."

"Was Matthew the father?"

"No." She swallowed. "I didn't know what to do. I couldn't tell my mom." She shook her head as if trying to dislodge the thought of crying. "Matthew suggested I talk with our priest."

"And what did he say?" Dave asked, though of course he could guess.

"Well, he said that if I had an abortion, I wasn't welcome in his congregation."

"So, what'd you do?"

"Matthew found a doctor." Emily stamped her foot on the ground, hard, trying to control her emotions. "He took me there. He stayed with me. That Sunday, when we got back to Rome, he held my hand and walked me into the church." She couldn't prevent the tears springing to her eyes; her breath hitched when she spoke. "Father Gamino actually stopped his sermon, but Matthew told me to hold my head up and we walked to the front pew."

Dave wished he'd been there. That was a thing he wouldn't have stood for. He was glad her friend had been there for her.

"What did the priest do?" he asked.

"He and Matthew just stared at each other," she said, swallowing an old, deep pain. "It was like a battle of wills, and then suddenly Father Gamino went back to his sermon." She frowned and finally met Dave's gaze. "Matthew saved my life. He made me feel like I was… worthy – of love and friendship."

"But that's when his anger and questioning started?"

"Yeah." She sniffed. "He started doing drugs. And when that melded with his religious questioning, you could understand why his parents were afraid he was possessed by something evil." She shook her head again. "It's _my_ fault that Matthew's life unravelled."

 _No it wasn't,_ Dave thought. _You were fifteen, and an adult who should have been supporting you put you in an impossible situation._

But he didn't say it aloud; Emily was a profiler, he trusted that she could read that from his body language.

He laid a hand on her arm. "Garcia uncovered some information," he told her, gently. "It's possible Matthew and the others killed someone in Spain."

She took it like a punch to the gut. "No, I don't believe that," she said at once.

"I'm just saying – if we keep pushing, you have to be prepared for what we might discover."

She nodded, and though her voice was distinctly wobbly, there was a steely determination behind it that Dave was pleased to hear. "I need Matthew to rest in peace. I owe him that."

 _That's the Emily Prentiss I know_.

"Then let's go give a profile," he said.

"The police haven't invited us in," she recalled, confused.

He shrugged. "The police aren't gonna do us any good on this one, anyway."

0o0

Spencer stood at the back of the room, watching the faces of the local clergy as they, listened in various stages of disbelief, to Rossi and his friend Jimmy. He couldn't entirely believe they had let them in at all, given the controversial subject, but they had and they were listening, and that might be enough.

Morgan had refused to come, not unexpectedly, but Spencer had accepted far weirder things than the facts of this case in the past couple of years, and even if it turned out to be nothing (though the deeper they dug the less likely that became) at least Emily would know they were on her side. Pearce, who was still in that oddly still, slightly nervous mood that came over her whenever her past came up, was standing beside him, arms crossed and watchful.

The report she'd produced from her time in London had made it clear how important talking to leaders of faith would be in this kind of situation. They had a network that was more far reaching than the BAUs was and they were trained to assess body language. They needed to know when someone in their congregation was vulnerable. They would likely recognise the signs.

 _It's strange_ , he thought, watching Father Davison introduce them and their theory. _To feel better that she's at my side or has my back, even though some days I'd quite like to strangle her._ He glanced at her. _Fewer days than before, though._

She had said, on their way over, when he had expressed doubts that this would help, that she suspected the majority of the people they would meet would be good, kind men like Father Jimmy – and none of them really wanted a murderer in their parish.

So far, this appeared to be the case.

"As I was saying to the agents, this is a topic on which we usually agree to silently disagree," said Father Davison.

"And we all respect that," said Prentiss. "We are not here to examine your beliefs in demonology or exorcism, but we are operating on the theory that the person responsible for these deaths does believe."

"We believe the inciting incident was the death of Father Raul del Toro in Galicia, Spain, four months ago," Rossi told them.

"How so, David?" Jimmy asked.

"There's an element who believes that the death was actually a murder," Spencer explained.

An older priest near the back leaned over so he could be seen. "You're not suggesting that this is some kind of retribution?"

"I'm afraid that is exactly what we're suggesting," said Pearce. "We're not looking for some great conspiracy or anything, but we think that at least one member of the church trained in the process of exorcism has become a vigilante and is killing these men."

"Even a priest can have a psychotic break," said Prentiss, as several people scoffed. "He may be under the delusion that he is working for God."

"The man we're looking for would be obsessed with the event in Galicia," Rossi added.

"He believes he's fighting evil, and may very well have followed these men here to Washington," Prentiss continued.

"We believe that one of the exorcisms took place over enough days for the victim to die of dehydration," Spencer explained.

"If I may," Jimmy interrupted. "An exorcism is like a prize fight. It's completely draining, both physically and spiritually."

Beside him, Spencer sensed rather than saw Pearce nodding, as if she knew exactly what he was talking about.

"Now, if this man truly performed three rituals within the last few weeks, he would need medical care." Father Jimmy told them.

"Is there – somewhere he would go to convalesce?" Prentiss asked.

"Anything less than a working hospital would be too dangerous," said Jimmy.

Several nearby priests nodded.

Spencer took the opportunity to slip outside. Medical institutions – even faith based ones – kept records. And if there were records, he knew how to find them.

"Garcia, it's Reid," he said, when she picked up.

" _Speak, Boy Wonder."_

"I need you to run Catholic hospital records," he told her. "Look for any admissions for exhaustion immediately following Patrick Cavanaugh's death." He paused, listening to the sound of her fingers flying. "You got it?"

" _You know I do."_

He smiled slightly, despite the urgency he felt. If this guy was still at the hospital… "Alright, now run the same search for the days immediately following the first two deaths."

" _I sense a crosscheck in my future."_

"Do you have anything?" he asked, as Prentiss jogged down the steps of the church to join him.

" _One hit. Father Paul Silvano. Currently at St Agatha's Hospital, room 214."_

"We got him," he told Emily, hanging up.

0o0

He had been packing his things when they found him, calm, entitled and entirely self-righteous.

He was completely under the impression that he had done nothing at all wrong – and certain that they could do nothing about it. The immunity he had secured from the church before travelling ensured as much.

There were few times in her life Grace had been as angry as she currently was. This was an abuse of power of the darkest kind; exorcism was a debated kind of magic – and controversial precisely because the people who carried it out generally considered magic to be the root of all evil – but it was powerful. She had used her own form of it to cleanse houses of things that were hurting people, but putting a person through it – that was a different matter.

She had seen possessions, of course, and had a handful of numbers memorised of people that might be able to help with that, but using exorcism to wilfully murder someone was particularly cruel. It was like torturing a man to death with no consideration for their suffering.

"'We're both fighting the same evil,' my arse," she spat. "The hell we are."

They were in the situation room, waiting for the others to (variously) get out of the interview room, stop watching the interview and get off the phone with the state department. Even Morgan was on board, now they'd proved to him that there was a case – and particularly because this unsub had found a get-out-of-jail free card.

"He got a diplomatic status so he could do what he liked and walk away from it, like a preferential predator," she growled.

"There must be something we can do," said Garcia.

Grace could think of a couple of things, but none of them were legal, so she kept her mouth shut.

Rossi came in, looking grim.

"What's he saying?" JJ asked.

"That he was invited by the families."

JJ shook her head, appalled. "And now he has them believing their loved ones are in a better place."

"Well, they're all devout," said Morgan. "The people they loved were troubled. With his stature, it's either believe they're in a better place, or live with the guilt."

"They chose to bring him in," said Grace grimly. "They chose to put their loved ones through hell. I can't see any of them willingly facing up to that."

"It doesn't matter anyway," Rossi reminded them. "We can't arrest him."

"Can we deport him?" Reid asked, and Grace smiled slightly at the anger in his voice.

"Probably not."

"It's crazy," said Garcia, and the others nodded.

"Diplomatic immunity wasn't intended to shield people from murder charges," JJ complained.

"So, Hotch bypasses the State Department," Garcia argued. "Goes straight to the Italian consulate."

"And loses his career," Rossi finished, with a grimace. "The State Department won't risk the potential embarrassment."

"They'll shut us all down," Grace groused.

"Well, there's some RealPolitik for you,"

"So, what do we do now?" Reid asked.

"Did you check his papers with ICE?" Rossi asked Garcia, who nodded unhappily.

"Yeah, his diplomatic status runs until the end of the month."

"Huh," said Rossi.

"What?" JJ asked.

"Well, he told Emily, 'The storm's almost over'," said Rossi thoughtfully.

"So?" JJ asked.

"So, forget priest, think unsub," Rossi advised.

"He's not finished," Grace realised.

0o0

He didn't have a choice. Hotch had had to let Father Silvano go, even though it was fairly obvious he had murdered three men. The team had been furious, though not with him; except for Emily, who was a mite too caught up in it all.

Dave was lingering outside Aaron's office, pretending that he and half the bullpen weren't listening to the argument going on inside. The rest of the team had given up the pretence entirely and were grouped around their desks, primed, grumpy and ready to go.

They hadn't even bothered to close the door.

"Are you actually accusing the Italian government of authorising this man's assassination list?"

"He admits he was present at every death!"

"The case is over."

There was a pause. "You said you'd give me leeway!"

"And I did. I understand your frustration – but there are some things that we cannot control."

 _He's trying to save her job,_ Dave thought. _But right now that's the last thing Emily cares about._

"Take some time off."

" _What?_ "

"I don't want to see you in the office for the next few days."

She stalked out of the office, across the bullpen, through the knot of agents standing sentinel around her desk to collect her bag, and then straight out the door. Dave sent the rest of the team a look that told them the case wasn't as finished as the State Department wanted it to be and hurried after her. Behind him, he heard Reid murmuring vaguely about lunch. He caught up with her at the elevator.

"You up for another drive?"

She looked up at him, astonished.

"Are you sure?" she asked, after a moment.

"He's going to kill again," said Dave. "We may not be able to arrest him, but we can at least try to stop him."

The doors to the elevator opened into the parking lot, where Pearce was negligently leaning against an SUV. Behind her, Reid was signing it out. He handed the form back to the carpool attendant and joined Pearce by the car, looking resolute.

Rossi chuckled. They must have run down the stairs.

"Lunch, huh?" he asked.

The younger agent folded his arms. He knew the stakes. They could all lose their jobs over this.

"So," said Pearce, lifting her chin a little in that way she had that meant someone in the general area was in trouble, "where are we going?"


	21. Blizzard

**Essential listening: Sick of Losing Soulmates, by Dodie**

0o0

"Father Paul didn't kill Matthew," said Mr Benton sadly.

Mrs Benton was sitting straight backed in a chair, rigid with hate.

They had showed up at the Bentons' house with little hope they would let them in, but Rossi had barged them inside with a mixture of charisma and authority, and they'd even allowed Prentiss in – though reluctantly. The way they were treating her – especially Mrs Benton – made Spencer's blood boil. They had allowed their son to be murdered and she was still more furious with him – and with Emily – than she was with the person who had killed him.

He wondered what Emily had done to engender that level of hatred in someone. She'd hinted before that she'd had a wild past, at times, but like Pearce she kept a lot of things close to her chest.

He glanced at Pearce, who was being the model of the perfect agent, which meant that she was more angry than she could currently deal with and had pushed it somewhere numb to get through the interview. An image flickered through his mind, of the soft glow of candlelight, and a letter, and hands intertwined, and two lost souls feeling slightly less alone. He hadn't asked about the things that made her close up and run a whole continent away; he wasn't going to ask Emily, either. It was enough for him to know that they were hurting. He didn't need to know why to be there for them.

"Why are you so willing to accept that?" Emily asked. "I'm just trying to find the truth about how your son died."

"Then listen to me," said Benton. "Father Paul never laid a hand on Matthew."

"There are a lot of ways to kill someone without touching them, Mr Benton," said Pearce quietly.

Rossi gave her a look and she shifted slightly, acknowledging the wisdom of staying silent. There was a darkness to her tone that Spencer hadn't often heard. He found himself moving marginally closer to her.

"How do you know that?" Rossi asked, as Pearce shifted slightly.

The man sighed. "I was there," he admitted.

Emily gasped in horror. "You stood there and _watched_ Matthew die?"

"He wasn't the person you knew," he said, with absolute belief.

"Because Father Paul said that?" Emily asked, angrily.

Both Mr and Mrs Benton looked uncomfortable.

"Something horrible happened on that trip to Spain," said Matthew's father.

"You believe that because Father Paul said it," Emily retorted. "You can't think for yourself?"

Spencer winced. He agreed with her wholeheartedly, but this level of anger was likely to get them kicked out before they could get anything useful.

"Young lady, do not speak to me like that," said Mr Benton, and something inside Spencer snapped.

"I'm sorry, how exactly is she supposed to speak to you?" he found himself asking.

Benton stared at him.

"You just admitted to us that you allowed a man – a man we believe is suffering from a psychotic break – to physically detain your son, in your presence, and conduct a procedure that even members of the Catholic church describe as controversial and extremely dangerous. A procedure that caused your son to have a heart attack and die." He was breathing hard, aware that he was letting his anger get the better of him. "A heart attack which, for all we know, he might have survived if medical help had been sought. So, forgive me, how would you like her to speak to you, Mr Benton?"

Benton swallowed hard.

Spencer might have continued, but Pearce had slipped light fingers over his hand – a warning.

"I loved my son."

"Then you knew how Matthew was. You knew how paranoid he could be," said Emily.

"I was trying to save his life –"

"Thar priest must have done something to him! His heart wouldn't have just given out like that!" Emily snapped, rising from her seat.

"That thing killed him!" Matthew's father shouted and Emily sank back into her chair, despairing of him. "It was inside him for years. I know you know that's true."

"No," she argued passionately. "Matthew was a sweet boy! He was just troubled."

"He was never troubled until he met you," said Mrs Benton with open loathing.

"That's enough," said Grace, taking a step forward.

Spencer felt the absence of her hand like an ache. He crossed his arms, trying to dispel the feeling.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, that's enough." She stood, considering them for a moment before coming to a decision. "Emily, Rossi, wait outside."

"What?"

"No, I'm staying right here until –"

"Emily," said Spencer quietly. "Wait outside."

Rossi got to his feet and guided her out, shooting them both a look that plainly said he hoped they knew what they were doing. He hoped Grace did, at least – but by leaving out his name she had asked him to stay, which meant that whatever drastic recourse she was planning, it wasn't something that would put him at risk.

And it was something she needed a particular kind of back up for. The kind that knew about London.

When the front door had closed and they could hear the two agents stamping their feet on the front steps, Grace spoke.

"I was a police officer in London before I joined the FBI," she began.

"I don't know what that has to do with anythi-" Mrs Benton scoffed, but Grace silenced her with a look that could have stripped paint.

"We had a case like this. A rogue exorcist was working his way around the catholic congregations of the city, seeking out families with 'troubled' children – particularly teenage girls. The girls who were always in trouble, the ones who drank, or did drugs, or got pregnant. The ones whose parents had given up on them. The ones who were the most vulnerable."

There was something about the set of Grace's shoulders that told Spencer she was operating under a kind of barely-controlled fury and he was grateful that the Bentons were choosing to stay quiet.

"He would befriend their families, commiserate with them, inveigle himself into their confidence and then deliver the awful news – their daughter was possessed by a demon. That was why they wouldn't do as they were told anymore. That was why they were disobedient and wild. And – and he always made them believe – and he could help them, if the family would only trust him. He had the girls' best interests at heart." She spat the last word.

Spencer, who had read the file, knew exactly where this was going. Mr Benton was beginning to look pale.

"He'd request a private meeting with the girl, at the end of which she would either be sullen and tearful or half-mad, and he would tell the family that there was no other recourse but exorcism." She paused for a moment, her hard eyes on Mr Bentons. "When the traumatised girls told their parents that the priest had raped them, they dismissed it as the ramblings of the demon.

"Before we caught up with him he had physically detained, starved, tortured, raped and ultimately murdered nine girls, most of them in front of their families. The youngest was thirteen. We got there in time to stop him killing her, but she cut her own throat six weeks later, when she discovered she was pregnant and her parents denied her an abortion. Her five year old brother found her."

Mr Benton looked away. Spencer didn't blame him.

"He told us Matthew – he told us he and those other men – they – they killed a man," said Mr Benton.

"That's not what happened here," said Mrs Benton, interrupting. "It's an awful story, but our son – there was a priest in Galicia –"

"Your son, Mrs Benton, was a troubled young man. You have said as much yourself." She watched the other woman shake her head and turn away. "Father Silvano preyed on you and these other men's families, just as much as Father Casey did in London."

"You don't understand," Mrs Benton spat, suddenly waspish once more. "You faithless woman, you can't begin to understand the evils in this world."

"You need to be quiet now," said Spencer, and she stared at him. "Um – our team chases serial killers for a living – you really think we don't have a concept of evil?"

"I know demons are real," said Grace softly. She cast a slight, almost imperceptible glance at Spencer that told him to be ready. "I've seen a few in my time, and fought them." The certainty in her voice sent a tiny thrill of fear down Spencer's spine. "And they are wicked, despicable things. But no more so than people choose to be."

She raised her hand then, palm out, and opened her fingers to reveal a small, flickering handful of flames. Spencer swallowed. It was beautiful and brave and a little reckless.

Mrs Benton gave a little shriek and put the chair between herself and Grace, her hands over her mouth. Mr Benton stared at the flames, transfixed.

"I know there is more in this world than most people believe. I know that there are demons," she said softly, looking intently at Matthew's father. "And I know that those girls were not possessed… and neither was your son."

She closed her hand and the flames went out. Spencer let out the breath he had been holding. He had half been expecting one or the other of them to run.

"Our analyst did a little digging," she continued, as if nothing had happened. "Matthew, Patrick and Tommy V were indeed in Galicia when the priest at Santiago de Compostela died, but their financial records place all three of them forty miles outside the city, in a small village in the countryside, at a yoga retreat with a group of twenty other people. They were there for all but one day of their visit, which was their last day in Spain, when they accompanied Patrick Cavanaugh to a local hospital to seek a second opinion on a medical condition from which he had been suffering.

"The priest himself – I asked an old coroner friend of mine to look at his autopsy – died of a pre-diagnosed heart condition," she went on, in that same calm, strangely dark tone. "Your son didn't hurt anybody."

There was a pregnant pause.

"Father Silvano used you to satisfy his own compulsion as a result of a serious psychotic break," Spencer told them, trying to match Grace's tone. "And he secured diplomatic immunity before he came so that when he had murdered his victims he couldn't be prosecuted for it."

Mrs Benton gave a sob. "You don't know – he was – that wasn't our son –" She turned and fled from the room.

Spencer had a shrewd suspicion that she was probably calling Quantico to complain.

Mr Benton, on the other hand, was white as a sheet. "He told us – he said – he said that he could help –" He broke down.

Grace knelt down before him and took his shaking hands. "He convinced you that you were saving his life. You're victims here, too. But right now, he's out there somewhere, and he's picked another victim. He as much as told us, but we don't know who. Please," she urged, gently. "Help us save them."

"I don't know. I don't know who it would be," he said, shakily. "He said anyone who opened themselves up to Matthew risked infection –"

"Did he have any visitors?" Spencer asked, his phone already out and ready, but Mr Benton shook his head.

"He wasn't supposed to see anyone until he – until he was –"

"Until he was 'better'," Grace finished.

"Was he here the whole time?" Spencer asked.

"Yes – he – we kept him in – in his room…"

He nodded and called Garcia as he and Grace hurried out of the room. They passed Mrs Benton, who was sobbing down the phone in the hall.

"Garcia, I need you to check the phone records for an address." He said, as they joined Emily and Rossi on the front step. "No, I'm not going to tell you. Yeah," he said, glancing up at Emily. "It's for Emily."

"What happened?" she demanded, and Grace explained about the conduit of evil theory.

"But his dad says he didn't see anyone," said Spencer.

"Yes, and I believe him," Grace nodded. "So I'm guessing Matthew snuck out of his room and called someone."

"He spoke to John Cooley," said Emily, suddenly. "The friend that let me know he had died. He told me Matthew had been even more paranoid than usual."

"Thanks Garcia," said Spencer. "The only phone calls made in the week leading up to Matthew's death were to the phone Father Silvano had on him when we escorted him to Quantico and to 911."

"So, how did he get in touch with John?" Emily asked.

"Reid, ask Garcia if there was a John Cooley on that yoga retreat in Galicia," said Grace, studying Emily's growing expression of horror.

"Did you catch that? Yeah…" There was a pause, where everybody stared at him. "He was there. He was on the same plane," he said at last, when Garcia told him.

"Son of a bitch lied to me," said Emily, hurrying down the steps.

"Garcia? Thanks."

" _Anything,"_ she promised. _"You just look after our girl!"_

"You got it."

"What are we going to do?" Grace asked, that same dangerous edge in her voice. "We have no authority to arrest him."

"I'll deal with Hotch," said Rossi. "Whatever you did in there," he added, as they climbed into the SUV. "Good work."

0o0

"We need to talk."

Aaron looked up and sighed. He'd known David Rossi for years and he knew that the cagey, urgent, calculating look on his face right now meant he had something to say that Aaron wouldn't like.

"What about?"

"There's going to be another victim."

Aaron narrowed his eyes. "And how do you know that?"

"Prentiss, Pearce, Reid and I went to speak to the Bentons."

 _Oh, for Christ's sake._

"I gave her a direct order," he said out loud, though he had half expected it.

"This one is all on me," said Dave, immediately.

"Well, that's fine, Dave," Aaron complained. "But the State Department's all over my ass. Where are Prentiss and the others now?"

"They went to stop it. Morgan, too."

Aaron's heart clenched. Although he knew what they were doing was right, that was four agents on his watch who had essentially just gone rogue. This could go very badly wrong, and if – when – it did…

"I can't protect them."

"I don't accept that," Dave argued.

Aaron rolled his eyes – actually rolled them.

 _One of these days, these guys are gonna…_

"Dave, governments don't really appreciate being accused of accessory to murder," he protested aloud.

Dave ignored him. It seemed like it was one of those days all round.

"Why not go straight to the Vatican?" he asked

"And what are we supposed to say to say to them?" he demanded.

 _It isn't like we can just wave a magic wand and have the whole thing go away,_ he thought, and then he remembered Pearce was out there, looking for a rogue exorcist. _Oh God._

"Say, 'Talk to the Italian government. Help us stop this man from perverting your beliefs.'"

Aaron looked out of the window for a moment. It couldn't be that easy, could it? If the Italian government were still pissed then this was going to create a shitstorm of epic proportions – and it would take all of them out.

 _I can't protect them_ , he thought, and picked up the phone.

"This comes down on all of us," he warned his old friend, who nodded, satisfied.

"I'm fine with that. You?"

It was a challenge, and Aaron knew it. He dialled.

0o0

It was pouring down now, which seemed appropriate somehow, like an open protest at the blatant misuse of a force that should have been for good.

"This is the place," said Grace, when the car screeched to a halt outside the row of townhouses.

Reid shot her a look of confusion, but she ignored him. She could smell the magic from out here – it crackled in the air like electricity.

There wasn't much time.

The door was open when Prentiss pushed on it. She called out her friend's name, but she needn't have bothered. They could hear him screaming.

"Upstairs," said Reid, who had his gun out.

Grace didn't bother with hers as they ran up the stairs.

"I cast you out, unclean spirit!"

"You're a murderer!" Cooley screamed. "A murderer!"

"I adjure you, in the name of the spotless lamb," Silvano continued, in a louder voice.

Emily kicked the door in. "Step away from him!"

"FBI!" Morgan shouted.

Two other men – attendants, Grace guessed, immediately went to stop their progress; a third simply stood in the corner of the room, watching. Ignoring the ensuing scuffle, she ducked under the first man's arm.

"Get away from him!" Emily cried, from somewhere behind her.

The rogue priest's magic was thick within the room, coiling tighter and tighter around Cooley. He was writhing on the bed, bound at the wrist and ankle, sweating like he had a fever and bleeding from his nose and mouth. Grace gritted her teeth. She would have to find a way to interrupt it and counter it without Morgan or Emily seeing.

She put a hand on Cooley's leg, using her own magic to shield him, and immediately he stopped thrashing. His head fell back in open relief and he laid back, panting.

"Oh, thank God," he muttered. "Thank God."

"As we call on the name of the Lord!" Silvano thundered, then frowned. "In the name of the Lord!" he cried again, but it had no impact on Cooley.

Then he looked up and saw Grace, her hand still hovering protectively over the man in the bed.

"I will not let you hurt this man," she said softly.

"No!" he cried. "Even now, Baliel, you have moved into another host!"

Behind him, Emily was untying Silvano's latest victim.

 _Well, I've got his attention,_ Grace thought. _Better keep it before he remembers Cooley._

Swiftly, she pulled out the necklace she was wearing and dangled it in front of him. It was a gamble – she'd picked it up on holiday, years before, and hardly a demonic symbol, but he was sufficiently crazed at this point to see anything old as a threat. And the triple spiral of the triskele the ancient Celts had carved at Newgrange was well known enough that he might recognise it as pagan.

Apparently, he did.

"I will cast you out!" he roared, and all the magic he had been focussing on John Cooley surged towards her.

Unprepared and concentrating on keeping Cooley safe, it hit her with the force of a steel support beam. She cried out, staggering back. Blearily, she saw the man who had been watching in the corner slip out of the door, and then Father Silvano's hands fastened, vice-like, around her throat. He slammed her head back against the wall. White and red spots swam across her vision.

 _Fuck,_ she thought, as his thumbs pressed into her windpipe.

Her hands scrabbled at his, but it didn't do any good. From the sounds of it, the others were still busy. Her only chance was surprise. As hard as she could, she drove her knee into his stomach; her magic, working on pure instinct, surged through her hands and drove him back into the burly young lay brother who had been trying to disarm Reid, knocking them to the floor.

Grace gulped the air, falling to her knees as the weight of the priest and his magic fell away.

 _Bastard,_ she thought, as Morgan hauled him to his feet.

"You have no right to stop this!" Silvano cried, struggling, but as strong as the priest's madness was, Morgan was stronger.

"You okay, kid?" he asked.

Grace heard Reid growl something that sounded affirmative and heard the click of handcuffs as she hauled herself upright.

"You can't do this!" someone complained.

"Yeah, well, you just attacked a Federal Agent," said Reid, and hauled the man out of the room. "Pretty sure that means I can!"

"The other one got away," Morgan complained, as Emily helped Cooley sit up. All of them were ignoring Silvano, who was screaming bloody murder. "Pearce, you okay?"

She waved his concern away, walking stiffly through the house in the direction the third man had gone. Her lungs were on fire and she was sure there were bruises on her neck and ribs, but she was alive – and so was Cooley. Emily would get through this without the death of two old friends on her shoulders.

The back door was open. Grace stepped out into the back yard and looked around. The young man was long gone – but then he had only been an observer. A local lay brother Silvano had convinced to accompany him on his 'mission of mercy'. Hopefully he had seen the error of the old priest's ways – or at least the experience had scared him into not trying anything like this himself.

Grace turned her face up to the rain, which was stopping now, and followed the path that led to the front of the house.

0o0

Emily helped John out of the front door. She had wrapped him in a blanket as soon as she'd managed to get him to stop hugging her, and as soon as he'd felt strong enough to stand he'd started insisting he was fine.

"No, really, Emily – I'm okay," he said, as she helped him down the steps.

"No, you're not. Look at you," she said.

 _You look like you had a fight with a bear – and lost._

"Really –"

"Stress like that can tear a body apart – that's what happened to Matthew."

He caught her elbow just before they reached the ambulance. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you," he said suddenly, and she could tell from his eyes that he meant it – though what 'it' was escaped her for a moment. "In Italy."

It was strangely difficult to breathe, all of a sudden. This wasn't something she could deal with right now – maybe she would never be able to deal with it. Not with him. She managed to nod. "Let them take care of you," she insisted, but didn't protest when he kissed her on the cheek.

"Goodbye," he said, and allowed himself to be led away.

"I'll check on you later," she called after him.

 _And maybe by then I'll know what to say,_ she thought.

It had started to snow. She walked over to Hotch, who was standing by the line of official cars, glowering. Not at anything in particular, just generally glowering.

"If you want my gun and badge, I understand," she said, but he shook his head.

She turned to find Morgan and Father Silvano behind her; they had cuffed him, since he'd made a couple of attempts at getting to Grace. He was not happy to see any of them.

"There's a plane ticket in your name to Rome," Hotch told the angry priest. "Agent Morgan and I will drive you to the airport. Any of your belongings can be shipped to you."

"You have no right to deport me," the father retorted, insolently.

"The Vatican intervened," Rossi said, with some satisfaction. "The Italian government has rescinded your diplomatic status."

Emily stared at them, relieved.

"They'll do with you as they see fit when you're back in their jurisdiction," Hotch added.

Silvano looked around at them. "You've all just made the world a much more dangerous place."

He turned to Emily and said, in Italian, "May God's love be with you."

 _Go to hell_ , she thought, but she didn't say it, conscious that he was trying to get a rise from her. "And also with you," she replied, in the same language.

It shook him for a moment, but then an officer was leading him away, and she allowed herself to relax.

"I saw that guy up there," said Morgan. "He was certain he was fightin' against some kind of evil."

"We all have to be certain," said Rossi, philosophically.

"Rossi, don't tell me you believe in evil," Morgan complained, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't tell me you do this job and you _don't,_ " Rossi said, with a frown.

"I believe there are evil acts," said Morgan. "But those are choices, brain chemistry. What do you think, Hotch?"

Emily looked at him, still unsure of how much trouble she was in.

"I think deep down we're all capable of unspeakable things," he replied. "Where it starts or what you call it, I don't know." He grimaced. "Let's get him out of here."

Emily caught Morgan's arm as he turned to go. "Thank you," she said, hoping that he'd understand that all the times she had snapped at him over the last couple of days had been stress-related.

"Always," he said, and ducked into the passenger seat of the car.

0o0

Grace watched Morgan and Hotch drive away, the furious, delusional man defeated in the back of the car. She was pleased she wouldn't have to go with them. She didn't want to listen to whatever bile he intended to spew until they could get him on his flight.

He glared at her as the SUV passed, and she sent him her very best insolent stare until he was out of site. Then she allowed herself to subside, acknowledging the pain emanating from her abdomen, chest, throat, and head. It was strong enough to leave her clutching the iron railings in front of Cooley's house, aching and a little winded.

Gingerly, she touched the part of her head that had hit the wall. There was a lump forming.

Great.

Aware that she ought to try to get to a vehicle before she had to explain why she looked so battered, she took a step forward, but her leg felt wobbly and uncooperative.

 _Bollocks,_ she thought. _And I probably have a sodding concussion, too._

The arm that slipped around her waist took her by surprise.

"Give me one good reason – why I shouldn't let the paramedics have you," said Reid, allowing her to lean on him, which she did without thinking.

Grace croaked out a laugh, relieved. "Because I don't want to explain why it looks like I've been hit by a car when he only choked me."

"Only?" he huffed, but he tightened his hold around her, supporting as much of her weight as he could without making it look too obvious that that was what he was doing. "Hotch'll kill you if you don't at least see a doctor."

"Hotch is busy," she argued, tiredly.

She expected him to turn her around and direct her straight to the ambulance, where Cooley was being assessed, but instead he led her away from the scene and across the street, lifting the tape for her to shuffle under. They stopped about a street away.

Really, she thought, she ought to ask where they were going, but everything hurt too much for her to care. Reid was warm and solid, and his arm around her waist felt dangerously pleasant. She knew if he hadn't been there she wouldn't have made it this far. She leaned her head against his shoulder (with no thought at all about why she shouldn't) and closed her eyes against the gently falling snow.

 _I wish it could be like this again_ , she thought, and then swallowed hard, aware the ache in her throat wasn't all bruise. Feeling ashamed, she buried her face into the thick woollen fabric of his coat, hoping he wouldn't know she was crying.

They stayed like that for a few quiet minutes in the artificial hush of the snow. She could hear him breathing, little clouds of condensation floating off into the night above her head.

"The cab's here," he said, at last, and she made a show of rubbing snow that wasn't there off her face.

"Hey, man, if she's drunk, you can't get in," said the driver, leaning over the back as Reid helped her in.

"She got hit by a car," Reid lied. "We – uh – we were just heading back from the doctor's office, but our car broke down."

"Oh man, sorry. That's a rough break. You okay, honey?"

Grace managed to stop staring at Reid's unusually brazen countenance long enough to give the man a grimace that was intended as a smile. "I've had better days," she said, as Reid slid into the seat beside her and gave the cabbie her address.

"Good job you got someone lookin' out for you," he said. "I'll try to make the ride as smooth as I can."

"Thanks," said Reid, and turned to stare out of the window, away from Grace.

0o0

It took a little while for all the emergency vehicles to clear.

Emily was vaguely aware that Reid and Grace had disappeared, along with the ambulance and the SUV taking Silvano to the airport. She had been standing in the middle of the street for some time, just looking up at the snow.

"What are you thinking?" Rossi asked.

She hadn't even known he was there.

"It's like the end of _The Dead_ ," she told him sadly. "When Gretta remembers the boy she loved when she was younger. And she says, 'I think he died for me'."

She swallowed, thinking of Matthew's earnest eyes and the way he had held her hand that day in the church, and the hundred other times he had been there for her that long, lonely year in Rome.

Rossi nodded, understanding. "You know, James Joyce also said, 'There is no heresy or philosophy so abhorrent to the church as a human being.'"

Emily smiled. Matthew would have appreciated the sentiment.

"Where can I drop you?" Rossi asked, and Emily understood why he'd waited with her in the snow.

They were a family, this team. _And God save all of us that he cares to_ , she thought.

"I'm gonna walk for a while," she told him.

He patted his shoulder as he turned to go and nodded up at the falling snow. "Almost seems unreal, doesn't it?"

Emily wasn't sure how long she had been walking for. By the time she realised she was cold the snow was an inch thick around her feet. She stopped and looked around, then laughed.

She had come to a halt outside the doors to a church.

Sadly, she took out the picture she had been carrying around with her since John had told her the news and looked at the smiling children, lifting their arms up in some kind of teenage triumph. She was in the middle, with John trying to look cool on one side of her and Matthew looking jubilant on the other. He looked so different from the angry, frightened mess he had become.

 _But we were children_ , she thought. _We made mistakes, same as any other kids. And he stuck by me, even when my world was ending._

Emily brushed away a tear, remembering the people they had been. She frowned. Amongst the wet blotches of snowflakes accumulating on the photograph, something darker had fallen.

 _Blood_ , she realised.

She raised a hand to her nose, surprised.

 _Huh._

Rossi was right. Everything about this night felt a little unreal.

0o0

The cab driver, to their very great surprise, refused to let them pay him, stating that the fare counted as his good deed for the week, and drove off before either of them could protest.

"Well, it looks like chivalry isn't dead," Grace joked, and then coughed, because her throat still felt pretty gravelly.

"Come on," said Reid, and put his arm around her again. "You don't wanna slip..."

He saw her all the way inside.

"Are you gonna be okay?" he asked, a little brusquely.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," she lied. "You know me."

He nodded and made to leave.

"You could –" she began, and he turned back. "You could always stay," she said, looking up at him.

He stared at her, a deep frown on his face.

There was a bruise above his eye that he must have got in the fight. It seemed to make his eyes, already half in shadow, even darker.

When he didn't answer, she tried again. "I was thinking I'd order takeout." She swallowed. "Maybe that Thai place… You could join me – if you like? My shout."

His expression wavered, and for a moment she thought he might agree.

"I can't," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He turned to go. "Night."

"Spencer," she said, and with a visible effort he stopped and looked back at her. "Thanks."

He nodded, turned up his collar against the snow, and was gone.

Grace locked the door behind him, pulled out the takeaway menus from behind the utensil jar and sat disconsolately at her kitchen counter.

"I wish we'd just talk about it," she said, to no one in particular.

 _But then, when it's important, we never do._

0o0

 **Well, that was a heavy way to end this run!**

 **Once again, I have to thank my awesome reviewers. I'm not sure you know how much they keep us writers going!**

 **Enormous thanks, as ever, to my marvellous regulars, Evanescencefan97, gossamermous101, ElisaC, BlueMarian, DisneyLover100, LeopardFeather, Angelic demon chick, ahowell1993, huffle-bibin, xenocanaan and, of course, Mugglecreator and Bones, who are in my corner both on and off ffnet. :D I'd be lost without you guys! And an honourable mention for RedDragon395 who is a regular, but only just found this again xD (I see you, friend!)**

 **You guys rock more than Dobby in a sock!**

 **Another honourable mention needs to go to the Glitterati (you know who you are) for helping me out of plotholes and generally being a bit mad in all the right places, and also to Jess-ter, Bones and MuggleCreator for letting me throw bits of chapter and plot at you and telling me that it doesn't suck as much as I think!**

 **I'm doing CampNaNoWriMo this month, in an effort to catch up with my myriad projects, as well as putting together the third Anthology for the Superstars, so Moments of Break – I mean, Moments of Grace – will be back on the 3** **rd** **of August. I'm sorry! I know, I'm evil – but it's the only way I can think of to get ahead of the game so there are fewer hiatuses this time. As ever, if you want to hear the moment the first chapter appears, hit the 'follow author' button at the bottom of the page.**

 **If you're bored in the meantime, you can find my books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords, under Lauren K. Nixon and a picture of roughly half my face, or over at the website with an address that has laurenknixon and a dot and a com in it. There's a blog on there, too, but I'm even worse at updating that than I am this xD If you fancy dropping me a line I'm searchable on the book of the Face, Twitter (though I'm terrible at updating that) and Instagram (which I update every day, somehow!), or send me a PM through ffnet.**

 **I've also written some Harry Potter stories and one FullMetal Alchemist drabble, if you fancy a change of pace, all of which live on the other side of the Parlanchina profile.**

 **Love you all, my fine, delightful friends – enjoy the season, whichever it happens to be for you!**

 **Love and pickles,**

 **Parlanchina xx**


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